An Address on THE PLACE OF BIOCHEMISTRY IN MEDICINE

FoR more than a centulry past every medical man has had, in his consulting room or near it, a shelf with a few bottles of reagents, a spirit lamp, and some test tubes, with 'which to carry out certain simple chemical investigations which form-part of -clinical routine.That shelf is the prototype of this great institute, with which the munificence of Mr.Samuel Courtauld has enriched the Middlesex Hospital; and the contrast between prototype and achievement is no greater than that between the medical chemistry of a hundred years ago and the biochemistry of to-day.Indeed, the year 1828 marked an epoch, for in it the G'erman chemist Wohler, afterwards the fellow worker with Liebig, obtained that most abundant product of animal chemistry, urea, as a result of a reaction in the laboratory, and so began the removal of the barrier which was believed to separate organic from inorganic conmpounds-the chemistry of living things from the chemistry of the rocks. Early Associationt of Chemistry-with Medicinie.