EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES. 497 



velvet garments, often showing- their rings upon their fingers, or wear- 

 ing swords with silver hilts by their sides, or fine and gay gloves upon 

 their hands, but diligently follow their labors, sweating whole days 

 and nights by their furnaces. They do not spend their time abroad 

 for recreation, but take delight in their laboratory. They wear leather 

 garments with a pouch and an apron wherewith to wipe their hands. 

 They put their fingers among coals and into clay, not into gold rings.' 1 



During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the doctrines and 

 work of the alchemists had profound influence upon medicine. Alchemy 

 was not completely overthrown until Lavoisier gave the deathblow to 

 the phlogistic theory of Stahl. But for a considerable time before 

 Lavoisier introduced the new spirit into chemistry its methods and its 

 problems were gradually approaching those of modern times. It was, 

 however, over thirty years after the tragic death of Lavoisier before 

 the first chemical laboratory in the modern sense was established. One 

 can not read without combined feelings of wonder and pity of the 

 incommodious, forlorn, and cramped rooms in which such men as Scheele 

 and Berzelius and Gay Lussac worked out their memorable discoveries. 

 Liebig has graphically described the difficulties encountered by the 

 student of that day who wished to acquire practical training in chem- 

 istry. With some of the apothecaries could be obtained a modicum of 

 practical familiarity with ordinary chemical manipulations, but Sweden 

 and France were the centers for those with higher aspirations. 



It was the memory of his own experiences which led Liebig, imme- 

 diately after he was appointed professor of chemistry in Giessen in 

 1824, to set about the establishment of a chemical laboratory. Liebig's 

 laboratory, opened to students and investigators in 1825, is generally 

 stated to be the first modern public scientific laboratory. Although, 

 as we shall see presently, this is not quite correct, it is certain that 

 Liebig's laboratory was the one which had the greatest influence upon 

 the subsequent establishment and organization not only of chemical 

 laboratories, but of public scientific laboratories in general. Its 

 foundation marks an epoch in the history of science and of scientific 

 education. This laboratory proved to be of great import to medical 

 science, for it was here, and- by Liebig, that the foundations of modern 

 physiological chemistry were laid. 



The significance of this memorable laboratory of Liebig is not that 

 it was a beautiful or commodious or well-equipped laboratory, for it 

 possessed none of these attributes — indeed, it is said to have looked 

 like an old stable, but that here was a place provided with the needed 

 facilities and under competent direction, freely open to properly pre- 

 pared students and investigators for experimental work in science. 



The chemical laboratories of to-day are, in general, the best organized 

 and the best supported of- scientific laboratories. 



The need of establishing physiological laboratories was recognized 

 several years before the foundation of Liebig's laboratory. The 

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