LABORATORIES FOR GENERAL TEACHING 35 



intended. The floors are made of various materials ; some are 

 of wood, some of painted concrete, and one of rubber tile, while 

 most of them are covered with ' battleship linoleum.' All the 

 laboratory rooms have curved hospital bases where the walls 

 meet the floor, to facilitate cleaning. Especial attention was 

 given throughout the building to the exclusion of dust ; weather 

 strips were put on all the windows, and the maintenance of a 

 slight excess of air pressure within the building causes the 

 ordinary leakage to take place outward rather than inward. 



" As a place for the prosecution of exact physico-chemical 

 work it will probably offer better conditions than are to be found 

 at any other institution of learning. Its solidity and fire-proof 

 character give promise that it may endure for many years. But 

 even such a building is not an end in itself ; it is a means, and 

 its value (other than that due to its memorial character) must 

 depend upon the sort of work done in it. With incompetent 

 workers or inadequate apparatus it would remain insignificant 

 as far as important service to humanity is concerned. Hence 

 the generous subsidies made by the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington for the provision of apparatus and the securing of 

 assistants are peculiarly helpful, for without these subsidies the 

 work would be greatly hampered. The income from the remainder 

 of the original gift used as endowment provides only for heating 

 and janitor service. 



" It may not be amiss to say a word in conclusion concerning 

 the ultimate value to the world of physico-chemical investiga- 

 tion, a province of research which to some people may appear 

 to be very remote from practical usefulness. Inorganic and 

 organic chemistry are concerned with the study of material 

 substances, analytical chemistry identifies and weighs these sub- 

 stances, and industrial chemistry applies this knowledge to their 

 practical production ; but physical chemistry seeks to discovei 

 the mechanism of chemical change and the laws which underlie 

 all the other aspects of the subject. Thus physical chemistry is 

 the most fundamental of all the branches of chemistry. It is 

 profoundly interesting and significant considered as a pure 

 science ; and its bearings upon the problems of medicine, agri- 

 culture, and manufacture are incalculably important. Because 

 the animal and the plant upon which it feeds are both chemical 

 mechanisms, the thorough understanding of the fundamental 

 laws of chemistry is essential for their adequate physiological 



