December 30, 1898.] 



SCIENCE, 



927 



A consideration of the nature of tbo sub- 

 ject taught will also furnish a guide for the 

 employment of laboratory and didactic 

 methods in the required and elective courses 

 above suggested. In general the required 

 courses, being comparatively elementary 

 and concerned chiefly with the presentation 

 of well ascertained facts, may be made de- 

 monstrative in their character and may be 

 conducted in accordance with laboratory 

 methods, though a short course of didactic 

 lectures, parallel with laboratory work, will 

 in most cases be found to be essential. In 

 the elective courses which provide advanced 

 instruction in many directions the limits of 

 our knowledge will be more nearly reached. 

 It will, therefore, be necessary' to present 

 and weigh the evidence for and against the 

 various conflicting views which are almost 

 certain to be held with regard to subjects 

 lying within what Foster has called the 

 ' penumbra ' of solid scientific acquisition. 

 For this purpose the most suitable method 

 of instruction seems to be a short course of 

 carefully prepared didactic lectures which 

 should, however, be varied by demonstra- 

 tions whenever the nature of the subject 

 will allow. 



It is, however, unnecessary to discuss 

 these and other details at the present time. 

 They will speedily arrange themselves as 

 soon as the necessity for a comprehensive 

 reform in our methods of medical instruc- 

 tion is generally recognized, and it is in the 

 hope of helping to secure this recognition 

 that I have addressed these remarks to you 

 this evening. In whatever way the remedy 

 is to come it should not be long delayed, for 

 the diflSculty of giving adequate instruction 

 to constantly increasing classes seeking in- 

 formation over a constantly widening field 

 of knowledge is felt each year with greater 

 and greater keenness. 



h. w. bowditch. 



Haevaed Medical School. 



ON THE INCREASING IMPORTANCE OF IN- 

 ORGANIC CHEMISTRY* 



Whenevee a paper by Van't Hoff ap- 

 pears, it is read by chemists and especially 

 by physical chemists, with unusual interest. 

 This is due to the fact that the compara- 

 tively few papers which he has published 

 have had such a marked influence on scien- 

 tific thought, and on the development of 

 those branches of knowledge to which he 

 has devoted his energies. 



The present lecture is probably the re- 

 sult of his observation, since he has been 

 in Berlin, that by far the larger number of 

 German chemists are devoting themselves to 

 organic chemistrj'. At the same time that 

 he recognizes the importance of this field of 

 investigation, he utilizes this opportunity to 

 call attention to the difference between 

 the two branches of chemistry, organic and 

 inorganic, and to point out some of the ad- 

 vances which have been made, especially 

 in the latter. The main points of his lec- 

 ture will be given partly in his own lan- 

 guage, and partly as a free account of what 

 was said. 



The distinction between organic and in- 

 organic compounds dates back some two 

 hundred years. Those occurring in organic 

 nature, in living things, were called or- 

 ganic, while those existing in the mineral 

 kingdom were called inorganic. This divi- 

 sion had, at the outset, a certain scientific 

 justification, since inorganic chemistry had 

 to deal with the comparatively simple prob- 

 lem of explaining the chemical transforma- 

 tions in dead matter, while organic chem- 

 istry dealt with the much more complex 

 problem of the processes in living organ- 

 isms. 



While the original definitions of the two 

 branches have changed somewhat as new 

 facts have been discovered, yet this essential 



* Lecture before the 70th meeting of the Society 

 of German Scientists and Physicians in Diisseldorf. 

 — Zischr. f. Anorganische Chcmie, 18, 1. 



