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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Justus von Liebig. 



not likely to lead a student to the 

 study of chemistry. He was capable 

 of writing: "The animal is in organic 

 nature the iron; the plant is the water, 

 for nature begins with the relative 

 separation of the sexes, and then ends 

 in this separation. The animal decom- 

 poses the iron, the plant decomposes 

 the water. The female and the male 

 sex of the plant is the carbon and 

 nitrogen of the water." Even Kastner, 

 the professor of chemistry whom Liebig 

 went to Bonn to hear and followed to 

 Erlangen, told his students that " the 

 influence of the moon on the weather is 



obvious, because storms stop as soon as 

 the moon appears." 



But fortunately for science Liebig 

 found his way to Paris and came under 

 the influence of Gay-Lussac. In 1824 

 he was appointed associate professor of 

 chemistry at Giessen and the following 

 year opened the laboratory of chemis- 

 try whicli is generally regarded as the 

 first regular scientific laboratory for 

 research and instruction. The alchem- 

 ists had their laboratories and the 

 founders of modern chemistry had 

 rooms in which they carried out their 

 experiments. Anatomical laboratories 



