CHAPTER I 



LABORATORIES FOR GENERAL TEACHING 



THE word laboratory, which merely signifies a workshop, has by 

 long custom been applied chiefly to the room or building in which 

 chemical experiments are carried on, or at any rate experiments 

 in natural science in which operations more or less chemical in 

 character are practised. 



The chemists of the past were content with very modest 

 accommodation, provided a sufficient amount of light was secured 

 together with a supply of water and the means of obtaining heat. 

 Berzelius, the famous Swedish chemist, who lived till 1848, 

 carried out the greater part of his accurate estimations of 

 atomic weights as well as other researches in a room com- 

 municating with the kitchen of his house, where Anna his 

 servant maid acted as his only assistant. 



At this time the teaching of chemistry in the universities was 

 everywhere conducted solely by the method of lectures which 

 were rarely enlivened by experimental demonstrations. The 

 student desirous of learning something of chemical analysis or 

 other practical chemical work had to seek the privilege of 

 admission into the private laboratory of some professor of 

 chemistry. Liebig tells us that he had to leave his own country, 

 Germany, where in his youth there were no chemists of any 

 importance, in order to apply to Gay-Lussac in Paris for per- 

 mission to work under his direction. With this experience in his 

 mind it is not surprising that on his return home two years later 

 he should have determined to found in his own country an 

 institution in which students could be instructed in the art 'and 

 practice of chemistry, in the use of chemical apparatus, and the 

 methods of chemical analysis. Such was the origin of the famous 

 laboratory at Giessen which, from 1824 onwards, for many 

 years attracted students from every civilised country. It was 

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