ji6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scientific department of Yale. He was graduated from tlie Sheffield 

 Scientific School in 1875 with the degree of Ph. B., when nineteen 

 years of age. His graduating thesis was considered sufficiently note- 

 worthy to be published in the American Journal of Science, and it 

 was also translated into German and published in full in Liebig's 

 Annalen der Chemie, Leipsic. As an undergraduate in the Scien- 

 tific School he evinced great devotion and aptitude in the study of 

 chemistry, and became especially interested in chemistry as ap- 

 plied to physiology. His success is shown by the fact that in 

 the last year of his undergraduate study he was appointed a labora- 

 tory assistant in chemistry, to carry forward such instruction in 

 its physiological bearings and applications as was then possible. In 

 this connection it is to be remembered that the Sheffield Scientific 

 School was one of the first institutions in the country to recognize 

 the importance of a preliminary scientific education for young men 

 intending to study medicine, and in the annual catalogue for 1869- 

 '70 reference is made to an appropriate scheme of study specially 

 designed for those expecting to pursue the courses in the medical 

 schools. This was the beginning of the so-called " biological course " 

 in the school with the development of which Professor Chittenden 

 has been closely identified. The existing laboratories of chemistry, 

 physics, zoology, and botany at Yale had made it easy to establish a 

 course in general biology at this time, well adapted for providing 

 instruction in branches especially fitted for men intending to enter 

 the medical profession, but in which facilities in physiology and 

 physiological chemistry were still almost wholly wanting. 



The general character of the work done in this department is 

 fittingly recognized by President Gilman, who says, in his semi- 

 centennial address: " One of the most advantageous of these courses 

 has been preliminary to medicine. To follow the healing arts, which 

 have made during the last half century such wonderful advances, dis- 

 cipline is requisite in physics, chemistry, and physiology with pro- 

 longed laboratory practice and increasing familiarity with the normal 

 functions of organic life. Such courses were projected here five and 

 twenty years ago, and gradually the medical colleges are discovering 

 their value. The Johns Hopkins Medical School, for example, 

 allows no student to enter as a candidate for its four years' course 

 unless he has had such training, substantially as that here offered 

 many years ago, and never so advantageously as now. Names might 

 be cited of eminent physicians, leaders in physiology, pathology, 

 physiological chemistry, and hygiene, who received their bent from 

 the preliminary medical course of the Sheffield School." 



Physiological chemistry was, indeed, at that time given very 

 scant attention in this country, and its importance in biology 



