Laboratory

“ One of the most important innovations in this line has been the incorporation into the regular courses of a system of laboratory work, by means of which each student is given facilities for the actual chemical and microscopic study of the proximate principles, the elements entering into the composition of the human body and its secretions, and the reactions and histological characteristics produced by various pathological conditions, which are of value in diagnosis. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ To this end, the laboratory experimental work follows as closely as possible after the classroom exercises so that the essential unity of the two may be impressed upon the student’s mind. An effort is made to develop the student’s capacity for sustained careful observation and deduction, and to initiate good practice in the matter of recording and reporting upon scientific and engineering data. Great stress is placed upon the precision of the results obtained in the laboratory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I found it impossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and, before opening my experiments, I selected a site for a new laboratory in an unfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. You will be the first man, with the exception of my two devoted assistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation of the critical experiment. ”

“ Our method has thus crystallized about the laboratory as the one essential thing; but worse, we have used the very shortcomings of the laboratory as an excuse for extending its sway. The laboratory method is the method of research in biology. It is our only way to discover unknown facts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a laboratory organized upon this idea, every worker should be assigned to definite, positive duties, the accurate and careful performance of which would eventually be sure to advance exact knowledge. Here there is nothing speculative or doubtful. Here are certain things to be done, which can be done only by men of the most thorough training, equipped with the best appliances. In such a laboratory, chance would have but little place. ”

“ A laboratory for chemical experiment is a good thing, it is true, as far as it goes; but I should prefer to the laboratory a naturalists’ field club, such as are prospering now at several of the best public schools, certain that the boys would get more of sound inductive habits of mind, as well as more health, manliness, and cheerfulness, amid scenes to remember which will be a joy for ever, than they ever can by bending over retorts and crucibles, amid smells even to remember which is a pain for ever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A more precise conception of the nature of the proposed laboratory may be formed if reference is made to certain groups of appliances which such a laboratory should possess and be able to place at the disposal of the scientific men coming to it for facilities which may be denied them at home. ”

“ The laboratory method was such an emancipation from the old-time bookish slavery of pre-laboratory days that we may have been inclined to overdo it and to subject ourselves to a new slavery. It should never be forgotten that the laboratory is simply a means to the end; that the dominant thing should be a consistent chain of ideas which the laboratory may serve to elucidate. When, however, the laboratory assumes the first place and other phases of the course are made explanatory to it, we have taken, in my mind, an attitude fundamentally wrong. ”

“ They've rigged up a regular laboratory—taken over one of the rec halls—and they dabble in experiments of one kind or another. Useless, of course, with the limited equipment they have, but it seems to keep some of them happy. ”

“ A station for experimental biology must have not only the proper equipment for breeding and rearing organisms under natural conditions, but also for artificially changing and controlling the external factors of the environment. The physico-chemical laboratory (Fig. 10) provides the substances used as variable external factors and also to determine the physico-chemical properties of the biologically important colloids. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hence, it comes about that the editor sends men to work with the microscope, in the chemical laboratory, in the pharmaceutical laboratory, in the physiological laboratory, in the anatomical room, in the hospital, in the dispensary, in the tomes of medical literature of every language and of every age. In short, he has these men at work in every field congenial to them, and such that they can reach it. ”

“ Finally the problems were unscrambled and the laboratory began to run smoothly again. The research projects were reestablished and the work started out anew. Frayed tempers were soothed and the scientists finally got around to trusting each others' results again. The Laboratorians were now carefully but tactfully watched by the junior chemists who, in turn, were spending more time in the laboratories and less in their offices. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a small room at the back of the house, on the basement floor, which he used as a laboratory. He invited me to make use of it, and I was frequently there. He was always engaged in experiments of one kind or another, and had various ingenious projects in hand. In the laboratory was a large assortment of chemicals and medicines of various kinds. In the case of poor patients, I have sometimes asked him to make up a prescription, and he has done so. ”

“ The laboratory experiments should be both qualitative and quantitative in character. They should on the one hand illustrate the peculiar properties of the substances studied and the typical concomitant changes of chemical action, but on the other hand a sufficient number of quantitative exercises in the laboratory should be introduced to bring home to the student the laws of combining weights and volumes, thus giving him the idea that chemistry is exact and that quantitative relations always obtain when chemical action takes place. ”

“ If a teacher remains sterile both in himself and his students he has missed his vocation.
Of importance equal to that of an efficient body of teachers are adequate laboratory facilities both for teaching and research. Medical science has moved beyond that stage when a student could be kept profitably employed with a microscope and a box of slides. With the growth of laboratory methods of diagnosis, more varied and costly apparatus is needed, more space to place it and more laboratory service to guard it. ”

“ So I had spent two years in a school of chemistry, attending lectures, and performing analyses, qualitative and quantitative, and various other chemical experiments, which I used to think very droll and amusing, in order to fit myself for my future career—and at length, thanks to my father’s kindness, I found myself master of a laboratory which had been arranged in a manner regardless of expense, with water and gas laid on in every possible corner, and bottles, chemical stoves, and scales, &c., of a most ornamental brightness and perfection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 normal school a course in physics, in which the experiments are all performed in the class room by the teacher, is followed by a course in chemistry, in which the members of the class perform the experiments for themselves in the laboratory. And, notwithstanding the age, maturity, and previous observation of the pupils, a great deal must be done both in the laboratory and in the recitation room to be sure that all that happens is seen--that the purpose is clearly held in the mind--that the reason is fully understood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us see how such a theory works, say, in the School laboratory. A system which will extract successful results from a class of boys engaged in practical chemistry will stand any test we care to apply to it. Successful supervision of School science is the most ticklish business that a master can be called upon to undertake. We will follow our friend Brown minor to the laboratory, and witness him at his labours.
He takes his place at the working bench, and sets out his apparatus—test-tubes, beakers, and crucibles. ”