604 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 694 



have been turned and scientific discoveries 

 have produced new practical needs and 

 created new spheres of labor, industry and 

 commerce. 



Though physical researches were carried 

 on from the time of Galileo downward and 

 chemical work goes back to the age of the 

 alchemists who sought for the philosopher's 

 stone, the first distinctly modern scientific 

 laboratories appeared in Europe in 1824 

 and 1825. In the former year Purkinje 

 established a physiological laboratory in 

 Breslau, and the year after Liebig, in Gies- 

 sen, opened a chemical laboratory for the 

 use of students and investigators ; the latter 

 laboratory, stimulated from two inde- 

 pendent centers— Berzelius's laboratory in 

 Sweden and Gay-Lussac's in Paris— devel- 

 oping in the atmosphere of the German 

 ideal of WisseTischaft, was destined to exert 

 the greatest influence upon the develop- 

 ment and organization of other laboratories 

 for scientific work. In 1856 Virchow es- 

 tablished the first pathological laboratory 

 in Berlin. Dorpat was the home of the 

 earliest independent pharmacological labo- 

 ratory, established there by Buchheim in 

 1849. Physiological chemistry was housed 

 in a laboratory of its own in Strassburg in 

 1872 (Hoppe-Seyler), and hygiene at the 

 instance of Pettenkoffer was given a special 

 institute by the Bavarian government in 

 1872. The first clinical laboratory proper 

 was started in the Munich Hospital by von 

 Ziemmsen about 1886. Still later came 

 special laboratories for psychopathic stud- 

 ies. Now every university in Germany has 

 a complete set of these laboratories and 

 there are in that country, all told, more 

 than two hundred such medical institutes. 



From Germany the exact spirit of re- 

 search by means of organized laboratories 

 spread rapidly to other countries— to Eng- 

 land, Scotland and America, but Germany 

 has the credit of the first and most exten- 

 sive laboratory development; it is to this 



development that she owes her leadership 

 in medicine and the biological sciences dur- 

 ing the last eighty years. 



Liebig 's chemical laboratory was opened 

 in a small town, not in a great city, and in 

 this there were certain advantages. In an 

 autobiographical memoir Liebig has said: 

 "I always remember with pleasure the 

 twenty-eight years which I passed at Gies- 

 sen ; it was, as it were, a higher providence 

 which led me to the small university. At 

 a large university, or in a larger town, my 

 powers would have been broken up and 

 frittered away, and the attainment of the 

 aim which I had in view would have been 

 much more difficult, if not impossible ; but 

 at Giessen all were concentrated in the 

 work, and this was a passionate enjoy- 

 ment." "A kindly fate had brought to- 

 gether in Giessen the most talented youths 

 from all countries of Europe. . . . Every 

 one was obliged to find his own way for 

 himself. . . . "We worked from dawn to the 

 fall of night : there were no recreations and 

 pleasures at Giessen. The only complaints 

 were those of the attendant, who in the 

 evenings, when he had to clean, could not 

 get the workers to leave the laboratory.'' 



The peculiar advance made by Liebig 's 

 laboratory was the introduction of sys- 

 tematic and methodical training on an 

 especially devised plan by which young 

 men were introduced to a thorough prac- 

 tical knowledge of chemical properties and 

 manipulations. The laboratory became the 

 training school for the majority of chem- 

 ists outside of Paris, and was used as a 

 model for similar establishments in other 

 cities in Germany as well as in other coun- 

 tries. This laboratory convinced the world 

 of what could be done in an institution 

 containing suitable workrooms and ade- 

 quate equipment in apparatus, with proper 

 materials for study, including ready access 



•Cf. Deutsche RundsoJiau, Vol. LXVI., 30-39. 

 Cited by Merz. 



