846 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 413. 



in knowledge and civilization to the present 

 point. It was the discovery of the science 

 of metallurgy which enabled the human 

 race to span that great chasm between the 

 age of stone and the age of steel. 



In a science apparently utterly re- 

 moved from chemistry, viz., astronomy, 

 chemistry plays no unimportant part, for 

 it is through the aid of physical chemistry 

 only that the composition of the sun and 

 the stars has been revealed to man. 



In the biological sciences chemistry plays 

 no less an important role. It is the funda- 

 mental basis of animal and vegetable physi- 

 ology. The processes of growth in the ani- 

 mal and vegetable are purely chemical. It 

 is true that modern chemistry has not 

 reached the skill of nature, and we are un- 

 able to reproduce in the laboratory all the 

 changes which matter undergoes in the ani- 

 mal and vegetable organism, but those we 

 are not able to reproduce are none the less 

 purely chemical and show the high order 

 of talent which nature has provided in her 

 chemical processes, talent which it is well 

 we should emulate, although we may never 

 be able to imitate. 



"The weapons in the armory of the 

 modern physiologist are multitudinous in 

 number and complex in construction, and 

 enable him in the experimental investiga- 

 tion of his subject to accurately measure 

 and record the workings of the different 

 parts of the machinery he has to study. 

 Biit preeminent among these instruments 

 stand the test-tube and the chemical opera- 

 tion tjTpified by that simple piece of glass. 



"If even a superficial survey of modern 

 physiological literature is taken, one is at 

 once struck with the great preponderance 

 of papers and books which have a chemical 

 bearing. In this the physiological jour- 

 nals of to-day contrast very markedly with 

 those of thirty, twenty or even ten years 



ago. The sister science of chemical pathol- 

 ogy is making similar rapid strides."* 



I shall not speak in this address of the 

 purely chemical industries, because they 

 have so often been described. There the 

 role of chemistry is paramount. It is no 

 longer an aid, but a master. 



Thus in this rapid review is seen the im- 

 portance of chemistry in other sciences, 

 and, therefore, its place in the university 

 curriculum must always be a capital one. 

 This necessity has been recognized from 

 the very first in the higher education in 

 tliis country. In the old-fashioned col- 

 leges in which our fathers received a 

 training which made them, perhaps, more 

 eminent than their sons have become, be- 

 fore the days of the renaissance of science, 

 if we may regard it as ever having been 

 ■sdgorous in the past, chemistry was always 

 the fii'st of the sciences provided for. 

 WTien the laboratory gradually became 

 evolved as a means of instruction, it was 

 always the chemical laboratory which was 

 first established in all our higher institu- 

 tions, and when the day of specialization 

 permitted more than one professor to teach 

 the sciences, it was usually the professor of 

 chemistry who was first segregated from 

 the scientific chaos. And for this reason 

 to-day in every institution of higher learn- 

 ing, whatever the specialty may be which 

 the student of science studies, chemistry 

 becomes an integral and fimdamental part 

 of his course of instruction. While in 

 schools of chemistry it may not be neces- 

 sai-y for the student to study mining, civil 

 and electrical engineering, in schools of 

 mining, civil and electrical engineering 

 the student is always required to study 

 chemistry. 



Chemistry is also the fundamental sei- 



* Extract from presidential address delivered 

 by W. D. Halliburton to the Physiological Section 

 at the Belfast meeting of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science. 



