Final Days
Later, Reis confined his teaching and scientific studies, but his failing health become a serious impediment. For several years it was only by the exercise of his strong will that he was able to carry on with his duties. His voice began to fail as his lung disease became more pronounced, and in the summer of 1873 he was obliged to forsake his tutoring duties for several weeks. An autumn vacation strengthened his hopes of recovery and he resumed his teaching, but it was to be the last flicker of his expiring flame. It was announced that he would show his new gravity-machine at a meeting of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (Society of German Scientists and Physicians) of Wiesbaden in September, but he was too ill to appear. In December he lay down and, after a long and painful illness, breathed his last at five o'clock in the afternoon of January 14, 1874.
In his Curriculum Vitae he wrote:
As I look back upon my life I call indeed say with the Holy Scriptures that it has been "labour and sorrow." But I have also to thank the Lord that He has given me His blessing in my calling and in my family, and has bestowed more good upon me than I have known how to ask of Him. The Lord has helped hitherto; He will help yet further.Philipp Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorff, and in 1878, after the introduction of the electric telephone, the members of the Physical Society of Frankfurt erected an obelisk of red sandstone bearing a medallion portrait over his grave.
Read more about this topic: Johann Philipp Reis
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