90 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
with the efforts of the University to lift and improve the Dental 
School and the dental profession, and his prophetic belief that the 
relations between dentistry and clinical medicine were to become 
much more intimate than they had been. 
In 1883, Minot was advanced to the position of Instructor in 
Histology and Embryology; and this subject was given a satisfactory 
place in the curriculum of the Medical School. There was still re- 
sistance to the appointment of a teacher who did not hold the degree 
of Doctor of Medicine; but Minot had, in three years, proved not 
only that he was a vigorous teacher, but that he had business qualities 
which would make him a remarkably good director of a laboratory 
for the instruction of medical students. He invented an excellent 
method of buying microscopes for a whole class, and lending them to 
students for a term-fee which was sufficient to keep every microscope 
in repair, and in time to repay their whole cost. He studied every 
detail of the furniture and fittings of a medical laboratory, and de- 
cided on the shape and size of the desk-room each student needed. 
He made highly intelligent use of the card catalogue for his growing 
collection of embryological specimens, for his library, and for student 
records. He became expert in everything relating to the conduct of a 
laboratory, and set a good example to all the other teachers who were 
conducting laboratories in the Medical School. As the School was 
then in the process of changing from a school in which the lecture 
predominated to a school in which the laboratory predominated, 
Minot became more and more useful to the Medical School as a whole. 
In the year 1887, it was possible to promote him to an Assistant 
Professorship of Histology and Embryology. At the expiration of the 
usual term for an Assistant Professor — five years — he was made 
Professor of Histology and Human Embryology; and in this appoint- 
ment, with its new title, Minot's special subjects, and his high merits 
both in teaching and in research, were fully recognized. 
Between 1881 and 1883, the Medical Faculty planned and erected 
a new building for its own use on Boylston Street, at the corner of 
Exeter Street, — a building of which laboratories occupied a large 
part. Minot obtained for his courses an excellent lal:)oratory of his 
own planning. There in twenty years he built up his unique embry- 
ological collection, a monument to his insight, skill, industry, and 
power of inspiring others with his own zeal. In less than twenty 
years, this Ijuilding became inadequate for the best development of 
