536 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ates, in 1850, he had certainly obtained a good position for his sub- 

 jects in the College course by 1853. At the beginning of the 

 medical term in the autumn of 1853, he was ready to receive a 

 small number of medical students into his Boston laboratory, to pur- 

 sue the subject of qualitative analysis, and James C. White, subse- 

 quently adjunct Professor of Chemistiy in the Medical School, was a 

 member of this first class. It is believed that this was the begin- 

 ning in the United States of laboratory instruction in Chemistry for 

 medical students. 



On the 23d of May, 1855, comes the first application of a method 

 which Professor Cooke afterward used often. The Corporation 

 voted, " That $500 be appropriated to supply deficiencies in the 

 cabinet of minerals, to be expended under the direction ' of Professor 

 Cooke, provided that the additional sum of $500 be raised by private 

 subscription for the same purpose." Nearly a year later Professor 

 Cooke informs the Corporation that $1470 (subsequently increased 

 to $1720) have been contributed by persons whose names are sub- 

 joined for the increase of the mineral cabinet, and he thereupon pro- 

 poses that he have leave of absence for the summer term of 1857 to 

 make purchases in Europe. In every summer vacation, and in some 

 of the long winter vacations of that period. Professor Cooke travelled 

 in search of minerals ; and for a period of six years I frequently ac- 

 companied him. I was the first student whom he admitted to the lit- 

 tle laboratory in the basement of University Hall, and Professor 

 Frank H. Storer and I were his first assistants, both at the Cambridge 

 laboratory and at the laboratory in the Medical School. I therefore 

 have a vivid recollection of the humbleness of the beginnings of both 

 the Chemical and the Mineralogical departments ; of the elementary 

 quality of the instruction given ; and of the great disadvantages under 

 which all the instruction was given, without any possibility of offering 

 laboratory practice to the students, except as a favor which could be 

 granted only to very few ; but I also have a clear vision of the indom- 

 itable industry, perseverance, and mental activity of the young Pro- 

 fessor. He threw himself body and soul into his work, and wanted 

 neither recreation nor leisure, neither ease nor pleasure, but only 

 work which would tell for the advancement of his department and the 

 satisfaction of iiis worthy ambitions. 



Early in 1856, he begau to revolve plans for building a Chemical 

 Laboratory at Cambridge ; but a suggestion made to him by Mr. 

 John Eliot Thayer turned his attention to the Boylston Fund (then 

 amounting to nearly $23,000), which was held by the Corporation 



