642 



SCIENCE. 



[N.S. Vol. XIX. No. 



to the difficulties which have been over- 

 come. Gas lighting was not universally 

 introduced before electric lighting reached 

 such a high degree of development that 

 many belated country towns skipped a cog 

 and put in dynamos. If this possibility 

 had been suggested fifteen or twenty years 

 ago, it would have been greeted with in- 

 credulous smiles. Only an insignificant 

 minority of us had actually looked through 

 a fluoroscope and seen the bones of our own 

 hands by means of Roentgen's rays, when 

 Becquerel rays and all the various rays 

 from radium intervened to confuse us with 

 the very multitude of wonders. All these 

 great advances have been made possible 

 and have had their origin in laboratories 

 and laboratory methods, so that it is but 

 natural that laboratories themselves should 

 have undergone equally rapid and radical 

 changes. 



Eighty years ago there was not, in any 

 country, a single laboratory for the purpose 

 of teaching chemistry. To be sure, the 

 subject had been taught for many years, 

 both abroad and here, by lectures which 

 formed a recognized part of a medical edu- 

 cation. At Harvard, Dr. Aaron Dexter 

 was installed as professor of chemistry and 

 materia medica in 1783. In 1791, Major 

 William Erving died, and in his will de- 

 clared that, "Being unwilling to pass 

 through existence without profiting the 

 community, it is my will and pleasure that 

 a sum of money, not less than one thousand 

 pounds, be paid, as soon as it conveniently 

 can be after my decease, into the hands of 

 the overseers and corporation of Harvard 

 College, for the sole use and purpose of 

 enlarging the salary of the professor of 

 chemistry, who is to receive the annual 

 interest of it."' If this quotation adorns 

 my tale, it also points a moral by no means 

 out of date. The Erving professor of 

 chemistry and materia medica, in the year 



1811, was drawing the munificent salary 

 of $700 annually. 



We get a realistic picture of the facilities 

 for teaching chemistry at that time, from 

 the early history of Columbia, in the first 

 volume of 'Universities and their Sons.' 

 It appears that in 1792 a committee of the 

 trustees of that institution concluded that 

 they needed ' a professor of natural history, 

 chemistry, agriculture and other arts de- 

 pending thereon.' They further defined 

 his duties in this wise: "The schedule or 

 sketch of this professorship to comprehend 

 the philosophical doctrines of chemistry 

 and natural history under the following 

 heads: (1) geology, or the natural and 

 chemical history of the earth; (2) meteor- 

 ology, or the natural and chemical history 

 of the atmosphere; (3) hydrology, or the 

 natural and chemical history of waters; 

 (4) mineralogy, or the natural and chem- 

 ical history of fossil substances; (5) bot- 

 any, or the natural and chemical history 

 of plants; (6) zoology, or the natural and 

 chemical history of animals." 



This program would be sufficient to 

 stagger most of us, and so it is with some 

 relief that we learn a little farther on that 

 the college had facilities for the work, 

 which they described as ' a handsome chem- 

 ical apparatus * * * and a considerable 

 collection of fossils.' But any growing 

 confidence in the desirability of the posi- 

 tion is shattered when we learn that in 

 1814 the trustees memorialized the legis- 

 lature, and amongst numerous complaints 

 detailed, the following is not the least 

 grievous. They say, 'they have found it 

 due to the state of science and to public 

 opinion to institute a professorship of 

 chemistry as a part of the academic course, 

 and have appointed a professor without 

 being able to give him any compensation'! 



While all teaching was done by means 

 of lectures alone, laboratories did of course 

 exist, though we might well hesitate before 



