456 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 615. 



for even a Bichat or a Laennec to have put 

 them to any use or to have imagined their 

 use. The only scientific' laboratory which 

 existed at that time was the anatomical, 

 and this had been in existence for at least 

 two hundred and fifty years, although not 

 in a form which meets our present ideas 

 of such a laboratory. 



The modern scientific laboratory was 

 born in Germany in 1824 when Purkinje 

 established the first physiological labora- 

 tory, thus antedating by one year the 

 foundation of Liebig 's chemical laboratory, 

 which had a much greater influence upon 

 the subsequent development of laboratories. 

 As might naturally be expected, anatomical 

 and physiological laboratories had attained 

 a considerable development before the first 

 pathological laboratory was founded in 

 Berlin by Virchow. The opening and ac- 

 tivities of this laboratory, which has re- 

 cently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, 

 mark an era in the progress of medicine. 

 With the exception of the modest begin- 

 ning of a pharmacological laboratory by 

 Buehheim about 1850, all of the other 

 medical laboratories — those of physiolog- 

 ical chemistry, of hygiene, of bacteriology, 

 of clinical medicine — originated at a much 

 later date. 



This remarkable growth of laboratories 

 for the cultivation of the various medical 

 sciences has been at once the cause and 

 the result of the rapid progress of medi- 

 cine in recent years. By teaching and 

 exemplifying the only fruitful method of 

 advancing natural knov/ledge laboratories 

 have overthrown the dominance of author- 

 ity and dogma and speculation and have 

 turned medicine irrevocably into the paths 

 of science, establishing the medical sciences 

 as important departments of biology; by 

 demonstrating that the only abiding, living 

 knowledge, powerful for right action, 

 comes from intimate, personal contact with 



the objects of study they have revolution- 

 ized the methods of medical teaching; by 

 discovery they have widened the bound- 

 aries of old domains and opened to explora- 

 tion entirely new fields of knowledge, by 

 the application of which man's power over 

 disease has been greatly increased. 



Medicine, as a science, is occupied with 

 the systematic study of the structures and 

 functions of the human and animal body 

 in health, of their changes by disease and 

 injury, and of the agencies by which such 

 morbid changes may be prevented, alle- 

 viated or removed. Its ultimate aim, 

 which indicates also its method, is that of 

 all science, the deduction of general con- 

 cepts and laws from the comparison of the 

 relationships and sequences of ascertained 

 facts, and the application of these laws to 

 the promotion of human welfare. This 

 goal, to-day far from realization, is most 

 nearly approached where the principles of 

 physics and of chemistry can be applied, 

 but there remains a large biological field 

 awaiting reclamation for the application 

 of these principles. The subject matter of 

 medical study, as thus indicated, is of su- 

 preme import to mankind, but complex and 

 difficult far beyond that of any other nat- 

 ural or physical science. 



The places where such study may be 

 most advantageously carried on are labora- 

 tories and hospitals supplied with the ma- 

 terial for study, with the necessary instru- 

 ments, appliances and books, and with 

 trained workers. By growth of medical 

 knowledge the field to be covered has be- 

 come so vast as to require much subdivi- 

 sion of labor, nor is it to be supposed that 

 the end of this subdivision has been even 

 approximately reached. 



From human anatomy, the mother of 

 medical as well as of many other natural 

 sciences, there branched off in the eight- 

 eenth century physiology, and, still later, 



