MEMOIR OF 

 EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. 



CHAPTER I. 



BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

 1821-18JI. Age i-io. 



Forty years ago scientific education had made but 

 little progress in the United States. There is certainly 

 room enough for improvement to-day ; but to those of 

 us who still remember vividly the decade that went 

 before the civil war, the contrast between now and 

 then is very striking. In the first place, there are the 

 wonderful strides that have been made in discovery. 

 A retrospect of forty years takes us back to the days 

 before The Origin of Species was published, the davs 

 when the triumphs of spectrum analysis were still 

 hidden in futurity, when teachers of ph3^sics looked 

 askance at the '* correlation of forces," and students 

 of medicine went through their whole "■ curriculum " 

 in blissful ignorance of bacteria. So with applied 

 science. Those were the days of wooden war-ships, 

 while railroad and telegraph were in their callow in- 

 fancy, and antiseptic surgery had never been heard of. 

 As for getting motive power out of electricity so as to 

 move heavy cars or wagons, I heard it conclusively 

 proved in 1862, by our Professor of Physics at Har- 

 vard, that no such thing could ever be done. 



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