532 



NA TURE 



[April 5, 1894 



(3) What are the legitimate uses of the chemical labora- 

 tory of a university at the present time in this country? 



The first laboratory ever erected for the teaching of 

 chemistry — indeed, the first laboratory for teaching any 

 branch— was that of the University of Giessen, Germany, 

 which owed its existence to the enthusiasm of Liebig. 

 The story is an interesting one, and especially instructive 

 on an occasion such as this. Liebig was born in the year 

 1803. According to his own account, he had a hard time 

 of it in the schools. He says: " My position at school 

 was very deplorable ; I had no ear-memory, and retained 

 nothing or very little of what is learned through this 

 sense. I found myself in the most uncomfortable posi- 

 tion in which a boy could possibly be ; languages and 

 everything that is acquired by their means, that gains 

 praise and honour in the school, were out of my reach ; 

 and when the venerable rector of the gymnasium, on one 

 occasion of his examination of my class, came to me and 

 made a most cutting remonstrance with me for my want 

 of diligence — how I was the plague of my teacher and the 

 sorrow of my parents, and what did I think was to be- 

 come of me — and I answered him that I would be a 

 chemist, the whole school and the good old man himself 

 broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, for no one at 

 that time had any idea that chemistry was a thing that 

 could be studied." 



This was truly an unpropitious beginning, yet this butt 

 of his school was soon contributing more to the develop- 

 ment of chemistry than any one ever had before or than 

 any one ever has since. Filled with the determination 

 to study chemical things and phenomena, he left the 

 school where he had been such a failure, and entered an 

 apothecary shop, but at the end of ten months the pro- 

 prietor was so tired of him that he sent him back to his 

 father. As Liebig said, he wanted to be a chemist, not 

 a druggist. He must have been about fifteen years of 

 age when, in spite of his inadequate preparation in lan- 

 guages, he was received as a student in the L'niversity 

 of Bonn, and from here a little later he went to Erlangen. 

 But he appears not to have been much better satisfied 

 at the university than he was in the apothecary shop. 

 He speaks almost with contempt of the teachers under 

 whom he studied. " It was then a very wretched time 

 for chemistry in Germany," he says. " .\.\. most of the 

 universities there was no special chair of chemistry; it 

 was generally handed over to the Professor of Medicine, 

 who taught It, as much as he knew of it — and that was 

 little enough — along with the branches of toxicology, 

 pharmacology, materia medica, practical medicine, and 

 pharmacy.'' Referring to the equipment of the univer- 

 sities for the teaching of chemistry, he says : " I remem- 

 ber, at a much later period, Prof. VVurzer, who had the 

 chair of chemistry at Marburg, showing me a wooden 

 table-drawer, which had the property of producing quick- 

 silver every three months. He possessed an apparatus 

 which mainly consisted of a long clay pipe-stem, with 

 which he converted oxygen into nitrogen by making the 

 porous pipe-stem red-hot in charcoal, and passing oxygen 

 through it. Chemical laboratories, in which instruction 

 in chemical analysis was imparted, existed nowhere at 

 that time. What passed by that name were more like 

 kitchens fitted with all sorts of furnaces and utensils 

 for the carrying out of metallurgical or pharmaceutical 

 processes. No one really understood how to teach it." 



After a comparatively short sojourn in Erlangen, 

 Liebig returned home fully persuaded that he could not 

 attain his ends in Germany. Some of the young men of 

 that time had gone to Stockholm to study chemistry, 

 attracted thither by the fame of the great Berzelius. But 

 Liebig decided in favour of Paris. He was then seventeen 

 and a half years old, and, as we have seen, he could not 

 have been well prepared in chemistry, yet in a short time 

 after his arrival, he made such an impression on Alex- 

 ander von Humboldt that he was admitted to the labora- 



NO. T275, VOL. 49] 



tory of one of the most brilliant chemists of the day, Gay- 

 Lussac. He had previously begun an investigation on 

 certain fulminating compounds to which his attention was 

 first directed in a curious way at his home in Darmstadt. 



Let me again use his own words : " In the market at 

 Darmstadt I watched how a peripatetic dealer in odds 

 and ends made fulminating silver for his pea-crackers. 

 I observed the red vapours which were formed when he 

 dissolved his silver, and that he added to it nitric acid, 

 and then a liquid which smelt of brandy, and with which he 

 cleaned dirty collars for the people." Gay-Lussac gladly 

 joined him in the investigation, and he gratefully refers to 

 this opportunity. He acknowledges that the foundation 

 of all his later work was laid in Gay-Lussac's laboratory. 



And now to the main point. When Liebig was in his 

 twenty-first year he received an appointment to a pro- 

 fessorship of chemistry at Giessen through the influence 

 of von Humboldt. His opportunity had come. He de- 

 termined to have a laboratory for teaching. The great 

 advantages he had reaped from his contact with Gay- 

 Lussac showed him clearly that if students were to study 

 chemistry at all it must be in a well-equipped laboratory 

 in contact with a teacher. And so the first laboratory 

 was built, and became one of the great forces of the world. 

 Soon students flocked to the little university from all parts 

 of the civilised world, and the most flourishing and power- 

 ful school of chemistry that has ever existed was rapidly 

 developed. One of the most brilliant pupils of this school, 

 the late Prof. Hofmann, of Berlin, in speaking of its in- 

 fluence, says : " The foundation of this school forms an 

 epoch in the history of chemical science. It was here 

 that experimental instruction such as now prevails in our 

 laboratories received its earliest form and fashion ; and 

 if, at the present moment, we are proud of the magnifi- 

 cent temples raised to chemical science in all our schools 

 and universities, let it never be forgotten that they all owe 

 their origin to the prototype set up by Liebig." The 

 foundation of this school marked an epoch not only in 

 the history of chemical science but in the history of 

 science. The great success of this laboratory led natu- 

 rally to the building of others, and in a comparatively 

 few years a chemical laboratory, at least, came to be re- 

 garded as essential to every university. At first these 

 were of necessity modest affairs. One of the earliest was 

 that at Tiibingen, in regard to which a curious fact may 

 be mentioned. It appears that the ground available for 

 Liebig's laboratory in Giessen was not altogether well 

 adapted to its purpose, and in consequence, one of the 

 larger working-rooms received light from only one side. 

 When the laboratory of Tubingen was built later, 

 that at Giessen was copied in every detail even to the 

 dark room, notwithstanding the fact that there were no 

 buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, and light in 

 abundance was available. 



As time passed, the era of the palatial laboratory was 

 introduced. Probably we shall be very near the truth 

 if we fix the responsibility of this era upon Bonn. 

 Hofmann was called to Bonn from England, whither he 

 had gone under the most flattering conditions, and, before 

 accepting the new call, he had, no doubt, received 

 promises with reference to a laboratory. At all events, 

 a building was erected, much finer than anything in the 

 way of a laboratory that had ever appeared. As is 

 customary in Germany, the professor's dwelling-rooms 

 were in the building, and so beautiful were all the arrange- 

 ments, that when the King of Prussia passed through at 

 the time of the formal opening, he is said to have re- 

 marked, " I should like to live here myself." Soon after 

 this Hofmann built the laboratory at Berlin, and again 

 magnificence was the order of the day. Statues arid 

 carvings, and tiles and frescoes, took their place in 

 the laboratory, and since then in Germany and France 

 and Austria and Switzerland immense sums have 

 been expended in the erection not only of chemical 



