XXXI 



It is said by Dr. Pettenkofer that if he thought a substance was this or 

 that, or contained some particular body, he would frequently ask a student, 

 in whom he had confidence, to examine the substance. If the student failed 

 to find at once what Liebig expected, his confidence in the skill of the 

 student always fell much more quickly than his confidence in the justice 

 of his original idea. He would even naively say, " But you must find 

 it." If the student still failed to find it he would sink still lower in 

 Liebig's opinion, but would be sure to raise himself again if he took an 

 independent tone and gave indisputable proofs that Liebig's idea was 

 erroneous, aud suggested a better explanation of the phenomena. Of 

 course it was natural that this habit of adherence to an idea once taken 

 up increased on Liebig with years. 



But what furthered Liebig's progress so much alongside with his 

 unusual mental gifts and quickness of comprehension was his methodical 

 way of working. He saved himself and others an immense amount of 

 time in research by adopting good methods. 



Liebig had learnt elementary analysis with Thenard and Gay-Lussac ; 

 but when he set to work with such intensity at Giessen to determine 

 the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen of organic bodies, it must have been 

 most annoying to him]; to require so much time and apparatus. Just as 

 he had in his early years at Erlangen made up his mind that he must go 

 to Paris to complete his education, so he now saw that he must contrive 

 a simpler method of elementary analysis if Organic Chemistry was to be 

 developed. This important task occupied him for some years, but he 

 accomplished it at last. By degrees he got the apparatus into such a 

 simple and sure form that it surpassed in quickness and accuracy the 

 ordinary methods of mineral analysis. This being accomplished, the 

 questions about the quantitative composition of organic bodies could now 

 be easily answered. 



The five-bulb apparatus which Liebig contrived to make out of glass 

 tubing enabled him to absorb with facility and accuracy the carbonic acid 

 formed by the combustion of organic bodies. It has become an emblem of 

 the Giessen school. Probably the most important service rendered by Liebig 

 to science was the establishment of the Giessen School of Chemistry. He 

 had experienced in his own person the difficulty of getting a training in 

 the higher branches of the science from the lack of chemical schools. 

 This difficulty had at length been overcome in his case ; but only his 

 individual wants were thus satisfied by his accidental meeting with A. 

 von Humboldt, by whose means he was admitted to Gay-Lussac's 

 Laboratory. "What he had obtained by a happy accident he made acces- 

 sible to all in Germany. The founding of the Chemical Laboratory in 

 Giessen, for purposes of public and practical instruction, was quite an 

 epoch in the history of science. "What unexampled activity reigned in 

 those Chemical Halls ! There met and worked from morning to evening 

 the future professor of chemistry, the future manufacturer. All the 



