UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 461 



every part of the human body, but also a large number of prep- 

 arations in comparative anatomy. In 1892 the Wistar Institute 

 was established, being the first in America open to the public. 

 General Isaac J. Wistar has given to the Institute a large and 

 costly fireproof building, together with a sufficient endowment to 

 provide means for the original work for which it is intended. 

 While the museum is free for the inspection of all teachers and 

 students, the object of its laboratories is to afford facilities to ad- 

 vanced students only, and the institute is not to supersede the ele- 

 mentary instruction of undergraduate students of the university. 



The university aims not only to equip physicians with the 

 skill to combat disease, but also to send forth missionaries of 

 health to provide for the hygienic needs of the people. For this 

 purpose, in 1892, the Institute of Hygiene was established. The 

 discoveries of Pasteur led up to Koch's convincing proof of the 

 part played by minute organisms in the causation of tubercle. 

 One disease after another has been traced to its cause in some tiny 

 agent of mischief. Realizing the value of the many ways thus 

 open to beneficent knowledge, Mr. Henry C. Lea offered to pro- 

 vide the means for the construction of a building for the Institute 

 of Hygiene. The building was completed in 1892, and Dr. John 

 S. Billings became the director. The laboratory is the first struc- 

 ture of its kind erected in the United States, and it opens a com- 

 paratively new field of work in this country. Regular courses are 

 given in practical hygiene, bacteriology, and physiological chem- 

 istry. The following important investigations have already been 

 made: Sewer gas — a chemical, physical and bacteriological in- 

 vestigation, by Dr. A. C. Abbott, First Assistant ; a chemical and 

 bacteriological study of the Schuykill and Delaware water sup- 

 ply of Philadelphia, by Dr. J. H. Wright, Scott Fellow, 1892-93 ; 

 investigation into the nature and cause of membranous rhinitis, 

 by Dr. M. P. Ravenel, Assistant in Bacteriology ; investigation 

 on the influence of light on bacteria, by Dr. J. S. Billings and Dr. 

 A. W, Peckham. The most important contribution to science 

 from the new Laboratory of Hygiene is the one recently made by 

 John S. Billings, M. D., S. Weir Mitchell, M. D., and D. H. Ber- 

 gey, B. S., M. D., Assistant in Chemistry in the Laboratory, on 

 the Composition of Expired Air and its Effects upon Animal 

 Life. This valuable study has been published under a grant 

 from the Hodgkins Fund of the Smithsonian Institution. The 

 results obtained in this research indicate that in the air expired 

 by lower animals or by man there is no peculiar organic matter 

 which is poisonous to the animals mentioned, excluding man, and 

 that the injurious effects of such air appeared to be due entirely 

 to the diminution of oxygen or the increase of carbonic acid. 



The establishment of the Laboratory of Hygiene was the be- 



