702 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1063 



pointments in connection with Harvard 

 University ; one an appointment as lecturer 

 in embryology in the medical school; the 

 other an appointment as instructor in oral 

 pathology and surgery in the dental school. 



These appointments were procured for 

 him with some difSculty, for he was not a 

 doctor of medicine, and it was an unwel- 

 come idea for the medical faculty that any 

 instruction whatever should be given in the 

 medical school by a person who had never 

 taken the degree of doctor of medicine. 



He accepted both these appointments 

 with alacrity, although dentistry . was not 

 recognized then as a medical specialty, and 

 immediately showed himself to be a compe- 

 tent lecturer and laboratory teacher in sub- 

 jects which depended on the facile use of 

 the microscope by both teacher and stu- 

 dents. The place he took in the dental 

 school had, just previously, been filled by 

 Arthur Tracy Cabot, who had shown by his 

 acceptance of that appointment his sym- 

 pathy with the efforts of the university to 

 lift and improve the dental school and the 

 dental profession, and his prophetic belief 

 that the relations between dentistry and 

 clinical medicine were to become much more 

 intimate than they had been. 



In 1883, Minot was advanced to the posi- 

 tion of instructor in histology and embryol- 

 ogy, and this subject was given a satis- 

 factory place in the curriculum of the med- 

 ical school. There was still resistance to the 

 appointment of a teacher who did not hold 

 the degree of doctor of medicine, but Minot 

 had, in three years, proved not only that 

 he was the vigorous teacher, but that he had 

 business qualities which would make him 

 a remarkably good director of a laboratory 

 for the instruction of medical students. 

 He devised an excellent method of buying 

 microscopes for the whole class and loan- 

 ing them to students for a term fee which 

 was sufficient to keep every microscope in 

 repair and in time to repay their whole cost. 



He studied every detail of the furniture 

 and fittings of a medical laboratory and 

 decided on the shape and the size of the 

 desk room which each student needed. 

 He made highly intelligent use of the card 

 catalogue for his growing collection of 

 embryological specimens, for his library 

 and for his student records. He became 

 expert in everything relating to the con- 

 duct of a laboratory and set a good ex- 

 ample to all the other teachers who were 

 conducting laboratories in the medical 

 school. As the school was then in the proc- 

 ess of changing from a school in which the 

 lecture predominated to a school in which 

 the laboratory predominated, Minot became 

 more and more useful to the medical school 

 as a whole. 



In the year 1887, it was possible to ap- 

 point him to an assistant professorship of 

 histology and embryology. At the expira- 

 tion of the usual term for an assistant pro- 

 fessor (five years) he was made professor 

 of histology and human embryology, and in 

 this appointment, with its new title, Minot 's 

 special subjects and his high merits both in 

 teaching and in research were fully recog- 

 nized. 



Between 1881 and 1883, the medical 

 faculty planned and erected a new build- 

 ing for its own use on Boylston Street, at 

 the corner of Exeter Street — a building in 

 which laboratories occupied a large part. 

 Minot obtained for his courses an excellent 

 laboratory of his own planning. There, in 

 twenty years, he built up his unique em- 

 bryological collection; a monument to his 

 insight, skill, industry and power of inspir- 

 ing others with his own zeal. In less than 

 twenty years this building became inade- 

 quate for the best development of the med- 

 ical school, and the new buildings of 1905 

 began to be planned. The fundamental 

 consideration in planning and constructing 

 the new buildings was to adapt them thor- 

 oughly to the new method of instruction in 



