37^ Biochemistry in New York City [Mar. 



The College of Physicians and Surgeons, whicli was chartered 

 in 1807 and adopted as the medical department of Columbia College 

 in 1860, has on its rolls the names of Mitchell, De Witt, Macneven, 

 Dana, Torrey, St. John and Chandler as professors of chemistry, 

 and Smith, Post, Watts, Alonzo Clark, Dalton and Curtis as pro- 

 fessors of physiology. The Instruction in these departments was 

 given entirely by didactic lectures and no laboratory work was done 

 by the students until Chandler took charge of the instruction in 

 1872. Incidentally, I might mention the fact that a Student (Col- 

 ton) under Dr. Torrey at the old Crosby Street School, after wit- 

 nessing the anesthetic effects of nitrous oxide during the lecture, 

 proposed to make some money for his medical education by giving 

 some public exhibitions of the effects of this gas. While demon- 

 strating this at Hartford, Conn., one of the audience, a dentist, Dr. 

 Wells, was impressed by the exhibition and asked Colton to admin- 

 ister the gas to a patient while he removed a tooth. This was the 

 first application of laughing gas to dentistry and surgery. 



The Medical Department of New York University was organ- 

 ized in 1841 and the chair of chemistry has been occupied by John 

 W. Draper, John C. Draper and Rudolph Witthaus and the chair 

 of physiology by John W. Draper, Henry Draper, John Arnold, 

 Lewis A. Stimson, and William Gilman Thompson. Of these men 

 John W. Draper had a strong influence upon medical education and 

 scientific research and he made important contributions to both 

 chemistry and physics. He was a prolific writer and among his 

 publications I should mention a Text Book of Chemistry, a Text 

 Book of Natural Philosophy, a treatise on the forms that produce 

 the Organization of plants, a treatise on physiology, a History of 

 the Intellectual Development of Europe, Thoughts on the Civil 

 Policy of America, History of the Rebellion, Conflict of Religion 

 and Science. His work on glandulär action, endosmosis and radiant 

 heat are classical and his application of the daguerreotype process 

 to taking portraits is immortal, No laboratory instruction was 

 given in this Institution until about 1868 and no special instruction 

 in physiological chemistry was given until Rudolph Witthaus was 

 appointed in 1876. 



The Faculty of the Bellevue Hospital Medical College was 



