AmM£ch.Ymm*}  Life-History  of  a  Doctrine.  115 
(3)  Immediately  upon  the  removal  of  a  tube  from  the  machine  its 
sediment  should  be  lifted  by  means  of  a  pipette  and  a  drop  placed 
on  the  centre  of  a  slide,  a  cover-glass  added  and  the  slide  placed 
upon  the  blank  to  which  it  belongs.  While  all  the  specimens  are 
being  made  ready  in  this  way  for  microscopic  study,  the  chemical 
analysis  may  be  done,  allowing  the  microscopic  study  to  wait  until 
last. 
(4)  The  slide  is  now  placed  on  the  microscope  and  the  blank  upon 
which  there  is  no  slide  found  is  the  one  upon  which  to  record  the 
results  of  our  study.  The  signs  -J-  and  —  are  used  in  the  making 
of  records.  Five  plus  marks  are  used  to  denote  the  greatest  amount 
of  a  given  substance  encountered.  These  characters  are  also  em- 
ployed in  recording  acidity,  froth,  sediment,  sugar  and  albumin,  and 
have  been  found  to  facilitate  materially  in  all  clinical  laboratory  work. 
THE  LIFE-HISTORY  OF  A  DOCTRINE.1 
By  Prof.  Ira  Remsen. 
This  title  suggests  a  biological  analogy.  The  life-history  ot  an 
animal  includes  a  record  of  the  events  in  the  life  of  that  animal  from 
the  earliest  stages  to  the  end — from  birth  to  death.  But  there  are 
events  before  birth.  The  life-history  is  preceded  by  the  embryonic 
history,  and  there  are  events  after  death — events  biological,  as 
shown  in  heredity  ;  events  chemical  and  physical  as  shown  in  decay, 
and  the  reduction  of  the  complex  constituents  of  the  animal  to  sim- 
ple forms  that  can  be  assimilated  by  living  things  and  thus  enter 
again  into  the  round  of  life.  I  do  not  refer  here  to  spiritual  events 
after  death,  for,  in  speaking  of  animals,  I  have  not  had  man  in  mind, 
and  it  is  customary,  I  believe,  to  deny  to  all  animals,  with  this  excep- 
tion, the  persistence  of  the  spirit  after  death.  In  the  analogy  that 
I  have  in  mind,  however,  the  spiritual  events  are  to  be  taken  into 
account,  for,  as  I  think  can  be  made  clear,  there  is  a  life  after  death 
in  the  case  of  a  good  doctrine  as  in  the  case  of  a  good  man.  The 
pursuit  of  this  analogy  is  interesting  (to  me),  but  it  will  be  more 
profitable  to  illustrate  it  by  examples,  of  which  there  is  no  end.  I 
wish  especially  to  point  out  the  bearing  of  the  philosophy  of  the  his- 
tory of  chemistry  upon  the  present-day  problems  so  far  as  this  may 
be  possible  in  the  time  at  my  disposal. 
1  Presidential  address  before  the  American  Chemical  Society,  December,  1902, 
and  reprinted  from  the  Jour.  Ame? .  Chem.  Soc,  February,  1903. 
