EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES. 495 



of anatomy by dissections gradually assumed in the medical curriculum 

 that commanding position which it has maintained up to the present 

 day. 



For over six hundred years there has been at least some practical 

 instruction in anatomy, and for over three hundred years there have 

 existed anatomical laboratories for purposes of teaching and of inves- 

 tigation, although only those constructed during the present century 

 meet our ideas of what an anatomical laboratory should be. It is a 

 matter of no little interest, both for the history of medicine and for that 

 of science in general, that the first scientific laboratory was the anatom- 

 ical laboratory. Private laboratories for investigation must have existed 

 from the earliest times. Doubtless Aristotle had his laboratory. But 

 the kind of laboratory which we have on this occasion in mind is one 

 open to students or investigators or both. There was no branch of 

 physical or natural science, with the exception of anatomy, which stu- 

 dents could study in the laboratory until after the first quarter of the 

 present century. Only in anatomy could students come into direct 

 contact with the object of study and work with their own hands and 

 investigate what lay below the surface. 



The famous Moravian writer on education, Amos Comenius, over two 

 hundred and fifty years ago, gave vigorous expression to the concep- 

 tion of living, objective teaching of the sciences. He said: "Men 

 must be instructed in wisdom so far as possible, not from books, but 

 from the heavens, the earth, the oaks, and the beeches — that is, they 

 must learn and investigate the things themselves, and not merely the 

 observations and testimonies of other persons concerning the things."' 

 "Who is there," he cries, "who teaches physics by observation and 

 experiment instead of by reading an Aristotelian or other text-book 1 ?" 

 But how little ripe were the conditions then existing for the successful 

 carrying out of ideas so far in advance of his times is illustrated by 

 the very writings of the author of "Orbis Pictus" and "Lux in 

 Tenebris." 



It would lead too far afield to trace, in detail, on this occasion, the 

 development of physical and of chemical laboratories, but on account 

 of the intimate connection between the development of physics and 

 chemistry and that ef medicine, especially of more exact experimental 

 work in the medical sciences, a few words on this subject will not be 

 out of place. 



Methodical experimentation in the sciences of nature was definitely 

 established by Galileo, and was zealously practiced by his contempora- 

 ries and successors in the seventeenth century. It was greatly pro- 

 moted by the foundation, during this century, of learned societies, such 

 as the Accademia dei Lincei and the Accademia del Cimento, in Italy, 

 the Collegium Curiosum, in Germany; the Academie des Sciences, in 

 Paris, and the Boyal Society, in England. Much of the classical 

 apparatus still employed in physical experiments was invented at this 



