188 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Poisson, Cauchy), that the great work of Gauss on the 

 theory of numbers, which for twenty years had remained 

 sealed with seven seals, was drawn into current mathe- 

 matical literature, and became, as Newton's ' Principia ' 

 had become a century earlier, an inexhaustible mine of 

 wealth for succeeding generations. 



About the same time the experimental side of exact 

 laboratories research the use of the chemical balance, through which 



established 



Lavoisier and his followers had done so much to establish 

 chemistry on a firm and independent basis received a 

 great impetus by the establishment of the first chemical 

 laboratories within the pale of the universities. 1 In this 

 direction the greatest influence probably belongs to the 

 small town of Giessen, where Liebig opened his cele- 

 brated laboratory in the year 1826. It became the 



18. 



Chemical 



in 1826 



through 



Liebig. 



Steiner in geometry left to his fol- 

 lowers a large number of theorems 

 and problems without proofs which 

 he had solved by his methods ; and 

 it was only in quite recent times 

 that the Italian Cremona succeed- 

 ed in definitely clearing up the 

 whole of this original and valuable 

 bequest. See Hankel, ' Die Ele- 

 mente der projectivischen Geome- 

 tric, chapter i. ; Jacob Steiner, 

 Werke, vol. ii. p. 495. 



1 On Liebig's laboratory see Hof- 

 mann's Faraday Lecture, p. 8. 

 Chemical laboratories existed for 

 teaching purposes before Liebig's 

 at Giessen. Kopp (' Geschichte der 

 Chemie,' vol. ii. p. 19) mentions one 

 at Altorf, which was founded, 1683, 

 by the council of the city of Niirn- 

 berg for academic teaching pur- 

 poses. For the training of the 

 modern school of chemists no man 

 did more than Berzelius, in whose 

 laboratory there were trained Chr. 

 Gmelin, Mitscherlich, H. and G. 



Rose, Wohler, Magnus, Arfvedson, 

 Nordenskiold, Mosander, and others. 

 Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) 

 in ' Nature,' vol. xxxi. p. 409, men- 

 tions the beginnings of laboratory - 

 teaching at Glasgow by Prof. 

 Thomas Thomson in 1828. But 

 what was probably peculiar to 

 Liebig's laboratory was the syste- 

 matic and methodical training, on 

 a specially devised plan, in quali- 

 tative, quantitative, and organic 

 analysis, by which young persons 

 were introduced to a thorough 

 knowledge of chemical properties 

 and manipulations. The guides, 

 text-books, and tables for analytic 

 work of Will, Fresenius, and others 

 were elaborated to meet the 

 requirements of such methodical 

 teaching. Almost simultaneously 

 with Liebig at Giessen, Purkinje at 

 Breslau laid the foundation for the 

 first physiological laboratory. See 

 Du Bois-Reymond, 'Reden,' vol. ii. 

 p. 367. 



