844 CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT. 



the school and here first put into effect what he described as the labo- 

 ratory unit. The unit of the teaching laboratory is a room for twenty- 

 five students, provided with the essential instruments for laboratory 

 work and under the direction of o«e instructor. The entire class 

 comes together for lectures and demonstrations. The method renders 

 it possible to extend a laboratory indefinitely without confusion, 

 provided the necessary space and instructors are at hand. Minot 

 had moreover an excellent business sense and made the small l:)udget 

 at his disposal cover a wide field. 



He was a prolific writer, his most striking contributions being not 

 in small single researches, but in more extensive publications in which 

 he brought together and made more serviceable the accumulated 

 knowledge of a subject. Sometimes, as in the case of his well-known 

 Human Embryology, the work covered a large field. This large and 

 comprehensive work, the result of ten years labor, was in no sense a 

 compilation, but was based on his personal knowledge of facts, 

 expanded by the knowledge contributed by others. The American 

 edition was published in 1892 and a German edition in 1894. Of this 

 work His, at that time the leading anatomist of Germany, says, 

 "Minot's work is at present the fullest embryology of man which we 

 possess, and it will retain its value as a bibliographical treasure-house 

 even after its contents in many parts have been superseded." He 

 early became interested in the subject of growth, the stimulus 

 probabl\- coming from Bowditch, who was carrying on his well known 

 studies on the growth of school children while Minot was working in 

 his laboratory. His first paper on the subject, 1878, was "Growth 

 as a Function of Cells" which was quickly followed by another 

 "On Certain Laws of Histological Differentiation" and in the same 

 year he presented in an address "On Conditions to be Filled by a 

 Theory- of Life" an outline of his future work. There were many 

 papers on the subject of growth and senescence, the whole being 

 brought together in a book " The Problem of Age, Growth and Death" 

 based on lectures at the Lowell Institute, March 1907. This work 

 has been so well analyzed by Lewis in his Memoir that I ciuote from 

 it. "Senescence and rejuvenation were studied by tabulating the 

 weights of gurnea-pigs from birth to old age, and of rabbit embryos 

 up to the time of birth, using weight as a measure of growth. The 

 conclusion was drawn that 'the fertilized ovum is endowed with an 

 enormous power for growth, over ninety-eight per cent of which has 

 been lost at the time of birth. The remaining two per cent is largely 

 exhausted in infancy. Therefore he concludes that "senescence is at 



