881 



LIEBIG, JUSTUS, BARON VON. 



LIEBIG, JUSTUS, BARON VON. 



882 



to take the suffrages, and the first tribes had already voted for the 

 bills, the dictator, attended by a great body of the patricians, repaired 

 to the place of assembly, and declared that he was come to support 

 the rights of one part of the tribunes to put their veto on the pro- 

 ceedings of the others ; and as Licinius and Sextius paid no attention 

 to him, Camillus ordered the lictors to disperse the assembly, threaten- 

 ing, in case of noncompliance, to summon the people to the Campus 

 Martins, to enlist and march into the field. This put a stop to the 

 Toting. Licinius and Sextius then preferred a bill that M. Furius 

 Camillus should be fined 500,000 Asses, to be sued for as soon as he 

 laid down his office, for interrupting the tribes in their right of legis- 

 lating. Camillus now bent before the storm and abdicated his office. 

 It appears that Licinius and Sextius, having assembled the tribes 

 anew, might have passed the two bills concerning the land and the 

 debtors, but that the people demurred to the law concerning the 

 consulship, in which most of them felt little interest. Tho two 

 tribunes however refused to separate the three bills, telling the people 

 that they must either have all or none ; and they added, that unless 

 they agreed to pass the three bills, they, the two tribunes, were deter- 

 mined to serve them no longer in their office after that year. They 

 consented however to be re-elected, and soon after obtained the passing 

 of another bill, by which the custody of the Sibylline books, instead 

 of being entrusted to two patricians as heretofore, should be entrusted 

 to decemviri, half of whom were to be always plebeians. They then 

 suffered six patricians to be elected military tribunes for the following 

 year, B.C. 366. In that year, the Gauls having again advanced towards 

 Rome, Camillus, now nearly eighty years of age, was appointed dictator 

 for the fifth time, and marching out of Rome completely defeated the 

 barbarians. On his return he obtained a triumph, with the consent 

 of both senate and plebg. Livy (b. vi. 41) here becomes extremely 

 laconic, merely saying that the external war being concluded, the 

 internal contest raged more violently than ever, and that after a 

 desperate struggle the dictator and senate were defeated, and the 

 three rogations or bills of the tribunes were allowed to pass. Plutarch, 

 in the life of Camillus, gives some further particulars of a great 

 tumult in the Forum, when Camillus was nearly pulled down from 

 his seat ; being protected by the patricians he withdrew to the senate- 

 house; but before entering it, turned towards the capitol and besought 

 the gods to put an end to these commotions, vowing to build a temple 

 to Concord if domestic peace could be restored ; and it appears that 

 it was he who persuaded the senate to comply with the wishes of the 

 plebs. Thus the three Licinian rogations passed into law after a 

 struggle of ten years, which is remarkable for the orderly and legal 

 manner in which it was carried on, and for the temper and judgment 

 shown by the two popular tribunes. 



Sextins Lateranus, the colleague of Licinius, the first plebeian 

 conul, was chosen for the next year, 365 B.C., together with a patrician, 

 L. -Krnilius Mamercinus. The senate however refused to confirm the 

 election of Sextius, and the plebeians were preparing for a new 

 secession and other fearful threateuings of a civil war, when Camillus 

 again interposed, and an arrangement was made that while the patri- 

 cians conceded the consulship to the plebeians, the latter should leave 

 to the patricians the pratorship, or office of supreme judge in the city 

 of Rome, which was then for the first time separated from the consul- 

 ship. Thus was peace restored. 



Licinius, the great mover of this change in the Roman constitution, 

 was raised to the consulship B.C. 363, and again in the year B.C. 360, 

 but nothing remarkable is recorded of him while in that office. In 

 the year B.C. 356, under the consulship of C. Harcius Rutilus and C. 

 Manlitis Imperiosus, we find Licinius charged and convicted before the 

 praetor of a breach of bis own agrarian law, and fined 10,000 Asses. It 

 seems that he possessed 1000 jugera, one-half of which he held in the 

 name of hia ion, whom he had emancipated for the purpose. After 

 this we hear no more of C. Licinius Stole. 



(Liry, vi. and vii. ; Niebuhr, Romiiche Geschichtt, vol. iii. ; Val. 

 Maximus, viii. 6 ; and Savigny's remark, Daa Recht det Besitzes, p. 175, 

 on bis blunder about the story of Licinius violating his own law.) 



LIEBIG, JUSTUS BARON VON, a distinguished living chemist. 

 On* of the most prominent features in the history of the science of 

 the 19th century has been the rapid progress of organic chemistry. 

 Although the initiative of this remarkable period cannot be given to 

 any one chemist more than another, the name of Liebig must ever be 

 most intimately associated with this brilliant passage in the history 

 of modern science. Very early iu the progress of his investigations 

 bis attention was directed to those compounds which throw light on 

 the mysterious processes which give life to plants and animals. His 

 subsequent position at the head of a national laboratory, with com- 

 petent assistants to repeat the experiments of others, and make those 

 suggested by himself, gave him an opportunity of generalising that 

 few other chemist* possessed, and which resulted in those works on 

 vegetable and animal chemistry which astonished the world by giving 

 an explanation of processes which, had hitherto been deemed beyond 

 the reach of science. 



Justus Liebig was born at Darmstadt on the 8th of May 1803. He 

 received his early education in the gymnasium of his native town. 

 Hia love of natural science induced his father to place him in an 

 apothecary's establishment, where he got the first insight into that 

 science of which he has become so distinguished an ornament. Here 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. TIT. 



he remained ten months, and was afterwards transferred to the Uni- 

 versity of Bonn in 1819. He subsequently studied at Erlangen, and 

 took his degree of Doctor of Medicine. In 1822 he obtained a stipend 

 from the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, which enabled him to visit 

 Paris, where he remained for two years. Here he studied with Mit- 

 scherlich, the distinguished professor of chemistry at Berlin. During 

 his residence in Paris he devoted himself to the science of chemistry. 

 His attention at this time was especially directed to the composition 

 and nature of those dangerous compounds known by the name of 

 Fulminates. These bodies are composed of an acid consisting of 

 carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen, combined with a base. The 

 salts thus formed are so easily decomposed that a slight touch causes 

 their decomposition ; a violent explosion follows, and a new series of 

 compounds are formed. It was the nature of these compounds that 

 Liebig investigated -thus indicating the bent of his genius towards 

 the investigation of the chemistry of those four elements, which, on 

 account of their universal presence in plants and animals, have been 

 called ' organic." In hia subsequent writings he often alludes to the 

 fulminates as instances of unstable chemical combination, illustrating 

 the nature of some of the changes which the organic elements undergo 

 in the compounds which form the tissues of plants and animals. 

 Although the existence of these compounds had been discovered by 

 our countryman Howard in 1800, yet their true chemical constitution 

 was not explained till the youthful Liebig read his paper on them 

 before the Institute of France iu the year 1824. The subject of the 

 fulminates has since frequently occupied his attention. 



The reading his paper at the Institute of France brought Liebig in 

 contact with Baron Humboldt, who was at that time residing in Paris. 

 At the moment he was unknown to Liebig, and on hearing his paper 

 read he invited him to his house. Liebig unfortunately forgot to ask 

 hia name and address, and not till a subsequent occasion did he learn 

 the name of his great friend, who from that time interested himself 

 warmly in his success. Humboldt introduced him to Gay-Lussac and 

 the circle of French chemists, and afterwards used his influence to 

 obtain for him the post of extraordinary professor of chemistry at 

 Giessen. At the early age of twenty-one Liebig entered upon hia new 

 duties at Giessen. In 1826 he was appointed ordinary professor in the 

 university. It was now that he commenced the establishment of a 

 laboratory for the teaching of practical chemistry. This was the first 

 institution of the kind that was established in Germany, and soon, 

 under the influence of the ardour and genius of its youthful super- 

 intendent, succeeded in attracting the attention of the chemists of 

 Europe. It was in this laboratory that not only Liebig himself 

 worked, but his assistants, Hofmann, Will, and Fresenius, who, by 

 their researches, have obtained a uame only second to their master. 

 The system of instruction pursued here has since become the model 

 of a large number of similar institutions all over Europe. The Royal 

 College of Chemistry in London, which is now attached to the Govern- 

 ment School of Mines, resulted from the success of the Giessen labora- 

 tory, and Dr. Hofmann, Liebig's able assistant, was placed at the head 

 of it. The laboratory of Giessen was the resort of students from all 

 parts of the world, and many of our British chemists, as Lyon Play- 

 fair, Johnston, Gregory, and others, were students there. 



In 1832 Liebig, in conjunction with his colleague Wohler, com- 

 menced editing the 'Annalen der Pharmacie.' This work, which has 

 been regularly brought out from the time of its first appearance till 

 the present, comprises papers on all subjects connected with pharmacy, 

 and it contains a large number of papers by Liebig himself. Latterly, 

 Liebig has only taken a secondary part in editing this work, and 

 Professor Puffendorf has been associated with Professor Wohler and 

 himself. 



In the autumn of 1838 Liebig visited England, and was present at 

 the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 which was that year held for the first time at Liverpool. At this 

 meeting he read a paper on the composition and chemical relations of 

 lithic acid. In this paper he announced Wb'hler's great discovery of 

 the composition of urea, and the method of making it artificially. With 

 the exception of oxalic and hydrocyanic acids, which are much simpler 

 substances, this was the first time that the chemist had succeeded in 

 forming out of the living body an organic compound. Liebig's paper 

 on lithic acid showed how highly he estimated Wb'hler's discovery, 

 and which led him to anticipate the time when other organic sub- 

 stances would be formed, and the chemistry of life be eventually 

 solved. On the associated men of science at this meeting Leibig's 

 presence made a deep impression, and it was with the sanction of the 

 whole meeting that he was requested to draw up two reports, one 

 'Oulsomeric Bodies,' the other 'On Organic Chemistry.' To these 

 reports the young chemists of this country looked forward with 

 anxiety. It is true that organic chemistry had at least one laborious, 

 representative in this country in Prout, but nothing had been done 

 even in our medical schools to form a school of organic chemistry. 

 It was known that Liebig had worked laboriously at almost every 

 department of organic chemistry, but a knowledge of the progress of 

 this science on the Continent was confined to only a few. The next 

 meeting of the British Association was held at Birmingham, but no 

 report appeared from Liebig. It was between this meeting and that 

 of Glasgow, which was held in 1840, that Liebig brought out the work 

 entitled, ' Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology." 



3 L 



