54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Chemistry in the University of Giessen. A new chair was established 

 for him, and as a laboratory he received a room, as he expresses it, 

 with four walls. Great was the opposition against this new professor; 

 for what was chemistry? Chemistry was no science, nobody knew 

 anything of chemistry, nobody would have it. Moreover, the appoint- 

 ment had not been made in the regular way, therefore the whole of 

 the authorities of the university set themselves against it. The con- 

 sequence was that the majority of that university persecuted that 

 man for twenty-seven years ; and, no matter what was his reputation, 

 the amount of his work, or the importance of his position, for twenty- 

 seven years this man could never once be made Rector of the Univer- 

 sity of Giessen. But where are the opposing influences now ? History 

 will not mention their names. Their ultramontane participators tried 

 to decry the great man as an atheist and materialist, and by that 

 means to remove from him the assistance of the state, and to diminish 

 his chance of gaining a living. But he was too strong for all of them. 

 In the year 1826 he was appointed Professor in Ordinary, a promotion 

 by which he became a fixed servant of the state and a fixed member 

 of the university. In that year he married Henrietta Moldenhauer, 

 a most amiable lady, who now survives him. 



Now comes the period of work which lasted to the year 1834. The 

 work itself I will not now enter upon, but we will, in future lect- 

 ures, see what was the nature of that work. We will perform before 

 your eyes some of those operations by which that work has become 

 of the utmost importance to mankind at large ; and you can then see 

 how, from a small point, there can be a light shed upon the largest 

 problems of science. 



In this year 1834, however, Liebig fell ill from overwork and anxie- 

 ty. A portrait, which was taken at that time by the now deceased 

 painter Engel, gives evidence of that, and I remember that the late 

 Prof. Zamminer told me that he had seen Liebig about that time 

 taking short w T alks in the evening air, looking pale and haggard, like 

 a man in consumption, with little spots of hectic on his cheeks, and 

 that his friends were afraid he would soon die. At that time he re- 

 tired from Giessen for a while, and went to Baden-Baden, in the hope 

 of recruiting his health. The patience which he had exercised for 

 many years, under the most narrow arrangements, then gave way, and 

 he asked for the building of a new lecture-room, the arrangement of 

 a proper laboratory, and for an increase of salary. All was refused 

 by the narrow-minded Government of Hesse-Darmstadt, through that 

 close-minded man, the then chancellor, Yon Linde. Then Liebig 

 wrote to Yon Linde a letter, in which, after the introduction, he con- 

 tinues thus: 



" I should have gained some convenience by these arrangements, hut they 

 were not intended for me personally; they would have been of lasting value for 

 the university, and would have secured to the chemical chair an advantage over 



