REPORT ON CHEMICAL LABORATORY 83 



could be made on a large scale, these all important sub- 

 stances were to be obtained only from the ashes of wood and of 

 seaweed. The consequence was that both soap and glass were 

 very expensive, and the result to the growth of civilization 

 was lamentable. The cleanliness, and therefore the health, 

 of the world is due to Leblanc, and since then to Solvay, two 

 chemists who have made soap cheap enough to replace the 

 mediaeval perfumes which were made to conceal the dirt. 



The two great departments of applied biological chemis- 

 try are medicine and agriculture, and it is only now that sys- 

 tematic and hopeful attempts are being made to apply chemi- 

 cal knowledge broadly in these fields. Already there can be 

 no doubt that progress in this direction in the next few 

 decades will be enormous. It has been arrested during the 

 last five or six decades because pure chemistry, after develop- 

 ing for years in connection with medicine and agriculture, 

 found itself at a point where it had to turn to a systematic 

 development of its whole field. Now, however, this develop- 

 ment has gone on so far that much can be done with our pres- 

 ent knowledge of organic chemistry and physical chemistry, 

 and much more will be possible in the future if this develop- 

 ment of pure chemistry goes on with the same acceleration 

 as in the past. 



For the welfare of the human race, it is essential that this 

 acceleration should continue, and there is no loftier public 

 service than advancing these activities. The advantageous 

 results of dealing scientifically with such subjects are to be 

 found everywhere in health and comfort, in relative freedom 

 from pain, in increased immunity to disease, so far as medi- 

 cine is concerned; in greatly lessened labor and enormously 

 increased efficiency of labor, resulting in wonderful increase 

 of productivity, and general economic amelioration for scien- 

 tific agriculture. 



