April 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



603 



ere long in a blind alley; and those who 

 have pursued this course have done no 

 enduring service to medicine. ' ' It was the 

 accessibility of external medicine or sur- 

 gery to direct observation that accounts for 

 the more solid foundation early laid in that 

 branch of medicine; inner medicine, in 

 which there was but relatively little oppor- 

 tunity for direct observation, was the field 

 for rank speculation for centuries, and it 

 was not until experimental researches be- 

 gan to be undertaken systematically that 

 inner, as contrasted with outer, medicine 

 began to make significant progress.^ 



The history of the development of ex- 

 perimental work is very closely connected 

 with the history of scientific laboratories. 

 The bibliography of this subject is sur- 

 prisingly small; an unusual opportunity 

 for an interesting and instructive historical 

 contribution lies open to him who will trace 

 carefully the origins of laboratory work 

 and their relation to the development of 

 natural science in general.^ In the third 

 century before Christ several natural sci- 

 ences, including anatomy, physiology and 

 pathology, were cultivated in state-sup- 

 ported institutes in Alexandria. Though 

 the apparatus was probably crude, there is 

 evidence that students in these institutes 

 studied nature by coming into direct per- 

 sonal contact with the objects of study. 

 With the decline of the Alexandrian school, 

 however, this method of practical study 

 fell into desuetude, and, except for the 

 experimental physiological methods of 



'Of. Allbutt, T. C, "The Historical Relations 

 of Medicine and Surgery." Reports of the Con- 

 gress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, 

 St. Louis, 1904, Vol. VI.; Boston and New York, 

 1906, 189-209. 



'An excellent rgsumfi of the subject as far as 

 medical laboratories are concerned is to be found 

 in an address by Professor W. H. Welch entitled 

 " The Evolution of Modern Scientific Labora- 

 tories," delivered at the opening of the William 

 Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine. Johns 

 Eopkins Hasp. Bull., Baltimore, 1896, VII., 19-24. 



Galen (second century a.d.), and perhaps 

 a little anatomical work at Salernum (thir- 

 teenth century), it was chiefly the surgeons 

 — men like Hugh of Lucca, Theodorie of 

 Cervia, Guy of Chauliac— who, keeping 

 their hands at work, managed to cultivate 

 medical studies more or less objectively. 

 Benivieni (1448-1502), the founder of the 

 craft of pathological anatomy and fore- 

 runner of Morgagni, seems to have been 

 "the first to make the custom, and to de- 

 clare the need of necropsy to reveal what 

 he called . . . the hidden causes of dis- 

 eases. ' ' In the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies came the great development of hu- 

 man anatomy. Vesalius published his won- 

 derful volume in 1543, and anatomy has 

 ever since his time been studied by dissec- 

 tion of the human body. Anatomical labo- 

 ratories for teaching and investigation have 

 been in existence for more than three hun- 

 dred years; indeed, the anatomical labora- 

 tory has priority in foundation over all 

 other scientific laboratories. 



It was not, however, until the nineteenth 

 century that the scientific spirit and scien- 

 tific work became the main characteristic 

 of the age. The nineteenth century has 

 been designated therefore the scientific cen- 

 tury, just as the eighteenth was called the 

 philosophical century, the sixteenth the 

 century of the Reformation and the fif- 

 teenth the century of the Renaissance.* 

 The great inventions before the nineteenth 

 century were made without special scien- 

 tific knowledge and were brought about 

 "more by accident or by the practical re- 

 quirements of the age than by the power of 

 an unusual insight acquired by study." 

 During the last fifty years the great discov- 

 eries have been made in scientific labora- 

 tories. "Whereas, formerly, necessity was 

 the mother of invention, latterly the tables 



' Cf. Merz, J. T., " A History of European 

 Thought in the Nineteenth Century," Edinburgh 

 and London, 1904, p. 89. 



