EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORATORIES. 499 



Physiological chemistry has been an important department of research 

 for over half a century, bnt it is only within recent years that there have 

 been established independent laboratories for physiological chemistry. 

 A large part of the work in this branch of science has been done hitherto 

 in laboratories of general chemistry, of physiology, of pathology, and 

 of clinical medicine. A physiological laboratory can not well b*e with- 

 out a chemical department, and the same is true of several other med- 

 ical laboratories; but it seems to me that physiological chemistry has 

 won its position as an independent science, and will be most fruitfully 

 cultivated by those who with the requisite chemical and biological 

 training devote their entire time to it. The usefulness of independent 

 laboratories for physiological chemistry has been shown by the work 

 done in Hoppe-Seyler's laboratory in Strassbnrg since its foundation 

 in 1872. This was the first independent laboratory of physiological 

 chemistry. 



The first pathological laboratory was established by Virchow, iu 

 Berlin, in 1856. About this time he wrote: "As in the seventeenth 

 century anatomical theaters, in the eighteenth clinics, in the first half 

 of the nineteenth physiological institutes, so now the time has come to 

 call into existence pathological institutes, and to make them as accessi- 

 ble as possible to all." It can not be doubted that the time was fully 

 ripe for this new addition to medical laboratories. Virchow secured 

 his laboratory as a concession from the Prussian Government upon his 

 return from Wurzburg to Berlin. Virchow's laboratory has been the 

 model as regards general plan of organization for nearly all patholog- 

 ical laboratories subsequently constructed in Germany and in other 

 countries. It embraced opportunities for work in pathological anatomy, 

 experimental pathology, and physiological and pathological chemistry. 

 This broad conception of pathology and of the scope of the patholog- 

 ical laboratory as including the study not only of diseased structure, 

 but also of disordered function, and as employing the methods not 

 only of observation, but also of experiment, should never be lost 

 sight of. 



The first to formulate distinctly the conception of pharmacology as 

 an experimental science distinct from therapeutics and closely allied 

 by its methods of work and by many of its problems to physiology 

 was Budolph Buchheim. This he did soon after going to Dorp at, in 

 1816, as extraordinary professor of materia medica, and it was appar- 

 ently not long after he there became ordinarius, in 1819, that he estab- 

 lished a pharmacological laboratory in his own house and by his private 

 means. Later, this laboratory became a department of the university 

 and developed most fruitful activity. Buchheim's laboratory was the 

 first pharmacological laboratory in the present acceptation of this term. 

 The conception of pharmacology advocated by Buchheim has been 

 adopted in all German universities, and in not a few other universities ; 

 but it can not be said to have been as yet generally accepted in the 



