THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC LABORA

TORIES.1

By WILLIAM H. WELCH, M. D.,

Professor of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University.

The scientific discoveries of the present century have had such a profound influence upon inventions, upon industries, and upon the comfort, health, and welfare of the people in general, that there is widespread, even if not always adequate, appreciation of the value of scientific study and investigation. But it may be doubted whether there is any proper understanding, in the minds even of the educated public, of the material circumstances which surround scientific discovery and which make it possible. The average man, if interested at all, is interested that the discovery is made, not how it is made.

In this country, where we must rely mainly upon enlightened private beneficence, and not upon governmental aid, to furnish the pecuniary resources which are essential for scientific progress, it is important that there should be some general information not only regarding the results of scientific work, but also regarding the external material conditions necessary for the fruitful prosecution of such work.

At the present day the systematic study and advancement of any physical or natural science, including the medical sciences, requires trained workers who can give their time to the work, suitably constructed workrooms, an equipment with all of the instruments and appliances needed for the special work, a supply of the material to be studied, and ready access to the more important books and journals containing the special literature of the science.

All of these conditions are supplied by a well-equipped and properly organized modern laboratory. Such laboratories are, with the partial exception of the anatomical laboratory, entirely the creation of the present century, and for the most part of the last fifty years. They have completely revolutionized during the past half century the material conditions under which scientific work is prosecuted. They are partly the result, and in larger part the cause, of that rapid progress

1An address delivered at the opening of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, Philadelphia, December 4, 1895. From the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 58, January, 1896.

of the pitsica and natural sciences Vici characterizes the era in viel we are bring.

Zde evolution of the moder laboratory still awaits its historian. İt as not difhent je Luc meidenta reperences to hustorical facts bearing upon this subiect. The derejopment of the chemical laboratory Lids Deel trared viti some fitness. But r 1 eurious that there is no satisfactory monograpine Treatment of the general subject of the historica. devejopment of scientin laboratories. The subject seems to te al atractive one. It would surely be interesting to trace the development of the tearing and the i ́estigating laboratory back to rte beginnings, to learn about the maternal er umstances under which the physicists. The chemists. The morphologists, and physiologists of former generations worket. What shace II The development of laboratores hat the learned aradenies of the Renaissance and of the subsequent centuries? What share nač public and private museums and collections of instruments of prension? What share had the work of the exact experimentalists, beginning with. Gallien, of physicians, of the aienenusts, and of the apothecaries? What individuals, universities, corporations, and governments were the pioneers in the establishment of laboratories for the various physical and natural sciences? The detalled consideration of these and many other questions pertinent to the subject would make al 11 Teresting and valuable historical contribution.

There is evidence that in Alexandria, under the early Ptolemies in the third century before Christ, there existed State-supported institutes, in which students of man and of nature could come into direct personal contact with the objects of staly, and by the aid of such appliances as were then available conid carry on scientific investiga

The practical study of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and other natural sciences was here exivated. We are very imperfectly informed as to the results and the material circumstances of this remarkable period in the lastory of science. We know that after about a century of healthy activity the Alxandrian school gradually sank into a place for metaphysical diseassions.

Fifteen hundred years elapsed before we next find any record of the practical study of a natural science. In 1251, the great Hohenstaufen, Frederick the Second, who has been called the most remarkable historic figure of the Middle Ages, commanded the teachers at Salernum diligently to cultivate the practical study of anatomy. After the passage of this edict occasional dissections of the human body were made, but it can not be said that there was any diligent enltivation of anatomy on the part either of teachers or of students daring the following two

centuries.

In the latter half of :) interest in the practic the immortal work e

tury there developed that active panatomy which culminated in in 1543. After this the study

of anatomy by dissections gradually assumed in the medical curriculum that commanding position which it has maintained up to the present day.

For over six hundred years there has been at least some practical instruction in anatomy, and for over three hundred years there have existed anatomical laboratories for purposes of teaching and of inves tigation, although only those constructed during the present century meet our ideas of what an anatomical laboratory should be. It is a matter of no little interest, both for the history of medicine and for that of science in general, that the first scientific laboratory was the anatomical laboratory. Private laboratories for investigation must have existed from the earliest times. Doubtless Aristotle had his laboratory. But the kind of laboratory which we have on this occasion in mind is one open to students or investigators or both. There was no branch of physical or natural science, with the exception of anatomy, which students could study in the laboratory until after the first quarter of the present century. Only in anatomy could students come into direct contact with the object of study and work with their own hands and investigate what lay below the surface.

The famous Moravian writer on education, Amos Comenius, over two hundred and fifty years ago, gave vigorous expression to the conception of living, objective teaching of the sciences. He said: "Men must be instructed in wisdom so far as possible, not from books, but from the heavens, the earth, the oaks, and the beeches-that is, they must learn and investigate the things themselves, and not merely the observations and testimonies of other persons concerning the things." "Who is there," he cries, "who teaches physics by observation and experiment instead of by reading an Aristotelian or other text-book?" But how little ripe were the conditions then existing for the successful carrying out of ideas so far in advance of his times is illustrated by the very writings of the author of "Orbis Pictus" and "Lux in Tenebris."

It would lead too far afield to trace, in detail, on this occasion, the development of physical and of chemical laboratories, but on account of the intimate connection between the development of physics and chemistry and that of medicine, especially of more exact experimental work in the medical sciences, a few words on this subject will not be out of place.

Methodical experimentation in the sciences of nature was definitely established by Galileo, and was zealously practiced by his contemporaries and successors in the seventeenth century. It was greatly promoted by the foundation, during this century, of learned societies, such as the Accademia dei Lincei and the Accademia del Cimento, in Italy, the Collegium Curiosum, in Germany; the Académie des Sciences, in Paris, and the Royal Society, in England. Much of the classical apparatus still employed in physical experiments was invented at this

period. Experimental physics from the first acquired a kind of fashjonable vogue, and this aristocratic position it has ever since maintained among the experimental sciences. These sciences must concede to physics that commanding position which it has won by the genius of the great natural philosophers, by the precision of its methods, and the mathematical accuracy of its conclusions, and by the fundamental Bature and profound interest and importance of its problems. The debt of the medical sciences to the great experimental physicists, from Kepler and Galileo and Newton down to Helmholtz, is a very large one, larger than is probably appreciated by medical men who have not interested themselves in the history of experimental and precise methods in medicine.

There existed in the last century cabinets of physical apparatus to be used in demonstrative lectures, but they were very inadequate, and suitable rooms for experimental work scarcely existed. It was not until about the middle of the present century that we find the beginnings of the modern physical laboratory. Lord Kelvin, then William Thomson, established a physical laboratory in the University of Glasgow about 1845 in an old wine cellar of a house. He tells us that this, with the bins swept away and a water supply and sink added, served as a physical laboratory for several years." It was as late as 1863 that Magnus opened in Berlin his laboratory for experimental physical research. Since 1870 there has been a rapid development of those splendid phys ical institutes which are the pride of many universities.

Humbler, but more picturesque, was the origin of the chemical laboratory. This was the laboratory of the alchemist searching for the philosopher's stone. In the painter's canvas we can still see the vaulted, cobwebbed room, with its dim and mysterious light, the stuffed serpent, the shelves with their many-colored bottles, the furnace in the corner with the fire glowing throngh the loose bricks, the fantastic alembics, the old alchemist in his quaint armchair reading a huge, worm-eaten folio, and the assistant grinding at the mortar. Fantastic and futile as it all may seem, yet here was the birth of modern chemistry. The alchemists were the first to undertake the methodical experimental investigation of the chemical nature of substances. No more powerful stimulus than the idea of the philosopher's stone could have been devised to impel men to ardent investigation. But search for gold was not all that inspired the later alchemists. Paracelsus, the alchemist, that strange but true prophet of modern medicine as he was of modern chemistry, said, "Away with these false disciples who hold that this divine science, which they dishonor and prostitute, has no other end but that of making gold and silver. True alchemy has but one aim and object, to extract the quintessence of things, and to prepare arcana, tinctures, and elixirs which may restore to man the health and soundness he bosst." And again he says of the alchemists, "They are not gi ss nor go in a proud habit or plush or

velvet garments, often showing their rings upon their fingers, or wearing 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." 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 chemistry. 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, immediately 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 prepared 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 SM 95-32