LABORATORIES AND PROBLEMS 



described to them in the ensuing lecture. But what 

 is most striking about the room was the very unique 

 method of arrangement of the desk or table on which 

 the specimens rested. It was virtually a long-drawn- 

 out series of desks winding back and forth throughout 

 the entire room, but all united into one, so that a speci- 

 men passed along the table from end to end will make 

 a zigzag tour of the room, passing finally before each 

 person in the entire audience. To facilitate such tran- 

 sit, there was a little iron railway all along the centre of 

 the table, with miniature turn-tables at the comers, 

 along which microscopes, with adjusted specimens for 

 examination, might be conveyed without danger of 

 maladjustment or injury. This may seem a small de- 

 tail, but it is really an important auxiliary in the teach- 

 ing by demonstration with specimens for which this 

 room was peculiarly intended. The ordinary lectures 

 of Professor Virchow were held in a neighboring am- 

 phitheatre of conventional type. 



Of a sudden there was a hush in the hum of voices, 

 as a little, thin, frail-seeming man entered and stepped 

 briskly to the front of the room and upon the low plat- 

 form before the blackboard in the corner. A mo- 

 ment's pause for the students to take their places, and 

 the lecturer, who of course was Virchow himself, began, 

 in a clear, conversational voice, to discourse on the 

 topic of the day, which chanced to be the formation of 

 clots in blood-vessels. There was no particular at- 

 tempt at oratory; rather the lecturer proceeded as if 

 talking man to man, with no thought but to make his 

 meaning perfectly clear. He began at once putting 

 specimens in circulation, as supplied on his demand by 



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