THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORA- 

 TORIES. 1 



By William H. Welch, M. D., 



Professor of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University. 



The scientific discoveries of the present century have had such a 

 profound influence upon inventions, upon industries, and upon the 

 comfort, health, and welfare of the people in general, that there is 

 widespread, even if not always adequate, appreciation of the value of 

 scientific study and investigation. But it may be doubted whether 

 there is any proper understanding, in the minds even of the educated 

 public, of the material circumstances which surround scientific dis- 

 covery and which make it possible. The average man, if interested at 

 all, is interested that the discovery is made, not how it is made. 



In this country, where we must rely mainly upon enlightened private 

 beneficence, and not upon governmental aid, to furnish the pecuniary 

 resources which are essential for scientific progress, it is important that 

 there should be some general information not only regarding the results 

 of scientific work, but also regarding the external material conditions 

 necessary for the fruitful prosecution of such work. 



At the present day the systematic study and advancement of any 

 physical or natural science, including the medical sciences, requires 

 trained workers who can give their time to the work, suitably con- 

 structed workrooms, an equipment with all of the instruments and 

 appliances needed for the special work, a supply of the material to be 

 studied, and ready access to the more important books and journals 

 containing the special literature of the science. 



All of these conditions are supplied by a well-equipped and properly 

 organized modern laboratory. Such laboratories are, with the partial 

 exception of the anatomical laboratory, entirely the creation of the 

 present century, and for the most part of the last fifty years. They 

 have completely revolutionized during the past half century the mate- 

 rial conditions under which scientific work is prosecuted. They are 

 partly the result, and in larger part the cause, of that rapid progress 



1 An address delivered at the opening'of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical 

 Medicine, Philadelphia, December 4, 1895. From the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bul- 

 letin, No. 58, January, 1896. 



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