Laboratory science

“ From these considerations it must be evident that the usefulness of the physical laboratory can not be inferred from the benefits derived from the laboratory teaching of chemistry, but must be judged by a scale of values peculiarly its own. We have called physics an exact science. ”

“ Yes, science to-day, at the close of this nineteenth century, in the laboratory is discovering and scientifically demonstrating the great, immutable laws upon which the inspired and illuminated ones of all ages have based all their teachings, those who by ordering their lives according to the higher laws of their being get in a moment of time, through the direct touch of inspiration, what it takes the physical investigator a whole lifetime or a series of investigators a series of lifetimes to discover and demonstrate. ”

“ Experiments [292] of this class—those in which measurement of some kind is involved—are the proper work of a physical laboratory. In every experiment we have first to make our senses familiar with the phenomenon; but we must not stop here—we must find out which of its features are capable of measurement, and what measurements are required in order to make a complete specification of the phenomenon. We must then make these measurements, and deduce from them the result which we require to find. ”

“ In this insistence that the chief use of the physical laboratory is instruction in the difficult art of physical measurement, an art difficult on the technical side, because of the patience and manipulative skill required, and difficult on the intellectual side because the comprehension of many measuring instruments is dependent upon advanced theory and considerable analytical power, it has not been forgotten that the laboratory may serve certain other though perhaps minor purposes. ”

“ There is, indeed, little to see that would greatly interest the casual inspector, for in its outward aspects one laboratory is much like another, a seeming hodgepodge of water-tanks, glass jars of specimens, and tables for microscopes. ”

“ Every instrument of precision used in the laboratory should be a standard of its kind, the best which could be made; otherwise the work of the institution might fall short of the high character intended for it. So also with the chemicals: only the best should be tolerated. ”

“ The large general laboratory has fifteen working places fitted with all the usual optical and histological apparatus and reagents. The necessary conditions for the study of the influence of mechanical agencies are enough light, as little dust and infectious material as possible and sterilizing flames. One line of research is to subject organisms to the influence of different densities in the surrounding medium. For fluids there are basins containing different concentrations of salts, brackish water, etc., with an areometer for measuring the specific gravity of each of the various liquids. ”

“ So at about the time when the microscope had taught that the cell is the really essential structure of the living organism, the chemists had come to understand that every function of the organism is really the expression of a chemical change—that each cell is, in short, a miniature chemical laboratory. ”

“ There was then no occasion for those delicate instruments of precision which are now found in every physical laboratory by means of which the man of science is able to investigate phenomena and determine laws that were quite unknown until a few years ago. ”

“ The instruments have made science accurate, and have immensely extended its powers in nearly all the fields of inquiry.
Although the most striking modern discoveries are in the field which was opened to us by the lens in its manifold applications, it is in the chemist's laboratory that we find that branch of science, long cultivated, but rapidly advanced only within the last two centuries, which has done the most for the needs of man. The ancients guessed that the substances which make up the visible world were more complicated in their organization than they appear to our vision. ”

“ His heart, which shows no signs of low temperature, is mainly in his laboratory, and he leads the way there, down a flight of stone steps to the basement, with a readiness that very clearly exhibits his latent enthusiasm.
THE LABORATORY OF DAVY AND FARADAY AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
Moreover, it is a laboratory eminently calculated to excite the enthusiasm of anybody, being, in fact, the most famous laboratory known to chemical science. ”

“ That which the pupil gets which is of most worth in his course in a physical laboratory is not a familiarity with the principles of the science, but a training in the methods of investigation in use among physicists, including a knowledge of the use and abuse of experiment and the necessary limits of our knowledge derived therefrom. The study which he ought to make of errors, instrumental and accidental, will be of great value in various fields. It is better for the laboratory to contain a few instruments of precision than a large number of inferior performance and accuracy. ”

“ Its research presents the historical or phyletic standpoint, and tends to consider the entire adult organism without attempt at abstraction of particular qualities. There is the laboratory proper, at university or marine or fresh-water or experiment station, that digs into the inside of the animal with the microscope, that tries to trace its whole development, that attempts to reduce its processes to known physical and chemical factors. ”

“ The results of Leslie and Rumford were obtained in the laboratory; but the walls of a laboratory do not constitute the boundary of its results. Nature's hand specimens are always fair samples, and, if the experiments of the laboratory be only true, they will be ratified throughout the universe. ”

“ But if you would see the most wonderful things in this laboratory—or rather, to be quite accurate, I should say, if you would stand in the presence of the most wonderful things—you must go with Professor Ramsay to his own private laboratory, and be introduced to some little test-tubes that stand inverted in cups of mercury decorating a shelf at one end. You would never notice these tubes of your own accord were you to browse ever so long about the room. Even when your attention is called to them you still see nothing remarkable. These are ordinary test-tubes inverted over ordinary mercury. ”

“ This characteristic of modern experiments—that they consist principally of measurements,—is so prominent, that the opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.
If this is really the state of things to which we are approaching, our Laboratory may perhaps become celebrated as a place of conscientious labour and consummate skill, but it will be out of place in the University, and ought rather to be classed with the other great workshops of our country, where equal ability is directed to more useful ends. ”

“ Still I value highly this opportunity which has been given me of making known to this audience the aims and purpose of the National Laboratory.
The idea of a physical laboratory in which problems bearing at once on science and industry might be solved is comparatively new. ”

“ It is this mutual dependence of biological studies which appears to me the justification of grouping together, as we do here, the study of such a number of vast subjects in a single laboratory. By that means each investigator will receive knowledge and assistance from the other; under such a system the desirable intercommunication of ideas is rendered most easy; and we are most likely to escape that narrow specialism which every laboratory in the long-run has a tendency to get into. ”

“ The laboratory building is a fireproof structure of light gray brick and limestone, commanding a beautiful view of the East River and the country beyond. There are laboratories of pathology, bacteriology, chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, experimental medicine and experimental surgery, each of which is under the charge of a member or associate of the institute with a staff of assistants. ”

“ The laboratory has been enlarged by the old workshop; some of the space has been filled up with seats as a theatre for those who attend the experiments of research; an arched opening is being made in the wall in front of the [Pg 259] table of the laboratory. This part of the establishment is now found to answer very completely the end of enabling the Professor of Chemistry and his assistants to prepare materials for the chemical lectures, and to carry on original inquiries upon new objects of science. ”

“ According to the directors, about seventy-five investigators have made use of the laboratory since its foundation and something like six hundred and fifty students of various grades have received instruction. Regular class instruction is given each summer by university professors from the departments of zoology, botany and physiology. Although the buildings are not formally open during the rest of the year, investigators are usually able by special arrangement to get the use of the laboratories at almost any time. ”

“ Those of us directly concerned in the administration of the biological laboratory here, are charged with the fulfillment of two duties: we have to make provision for the advancement of knowledge, and for its diffusion: we are to find accommodation and assistance for both investigators and students; while we must not suffer those engaged in research to be crowded out by beginners, neither must the beginners be overlooked in providing for those to whom they are one day to succeed. ”

“ The laboratory will undertake the training of observers for the various national organizations, the testing of instruments, the supply of standard sea-water for controlling salinity determinations, and also gas-analysis. It will also carry out experiments with improved apparatus and methods in order to ensure a degree of accuracy never before aimed at in work at sea. ”

“ The biological station came to put all that right. It presented a happy union of the observational work of the field-naturalist with the minute investigations of the laboratory student. It brought the laboratory to the seashore, and the sea, in the form of well-equipped healthy tanks, within the walls of the laboratory. It enabled the living organisms to be studied almost in their native haunts by the most refined laboratory methods. ”

“ A few keen-sighted men, combining in themselves, happily, the student and the teacher, recognized the fact that thorough instruction in physics implied and demanded the use of laboratory methods, such as had been utilized for some years in chemistry, and were rapidly coming into prominence in every other department of natural science. ”

“ But the biological laboratory, as it is now understood, may be said to date from about 1870, when Huxley, with the cooperation of Professors Foster, Rutherford, Lankester, Martin, and others (T.J. Parker, G.B. Howes, and the present Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, K.C.M.G., C.I.E.,) , held short summer classes for science teachers at South Kensington, the daily work consisting of an hour's lecture followed by four hours' laboratory work, in which the students verified for themselves facts which they had hitherto heard about and taught to their unfortunate pupils from books alone. ”

“ The technique of the organic chemical laboratory is a considerable and somewhat intricate body of knowledge. Through oral instruction the student becomes acquainted with those devices and forms of apparatus required for common operations, getting, where there is a choice of processes, the one which his instructor has had the best success with. ”

“ Each is in its way a chemical laboratory indispensable to the right conduct of the organism, but the precise nature of its operations remains inscrutable. The vast importance of the operations of these intermediate organs is unquestioned. ”

“ Of the many physical laboratories which have arisen in American universities through private munificence since the time when, fifty years ago, Joseph Henry, Barnard, Draper, Andrew White, and other American scientists started the great movement for higher research in science,376 there may be mentioned, as an illustration, the Johns Hopkins physical laboratory, the Jefferson laboratory at Harvard, the Sloan laboratory at Yale, the Fayerweather laboratory at Columbia, or the Ryerson laboratory at the University of Chicago. ”

“ The institution is only undertaking minor work directly in physics and chemistry, though these fundamental sciences are concerned with the research of all the departments, and in the case of the nutrition laboratory, physiological chemistry may be regarded as the field of investigation. ”

“ It has been my wish to state in general terms the aims of the laboratory, to make the advance of physical science more readily available for the needs of the nation and then to illustrate the way in which it is intended to attain those aims: I trust I may have shown that the National Physical Laboratory is an institution which may deservedly claim the cordial support of all who are interested in real progress. ”

“ This is through real contact with animals, plants, rocks, chemical compounds and physical instruments, and a well-conducted scientific laboratory has the same value as out-of-doors experience, with the great addition that it can be made systematic and therefore effective for power. ”