Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/562

544 of Halle. Here he passed much of the time of his year's stay in the pharmaceutical laboratory of Sternberg.

One of the inheritances he received from his boyhood and which he carried with him to the end was a great liking for an active outdoor life. In the summer vacations he would frequently take long pedestrian tours, and in the course of one of these he met the celebrated Weber brothers, Ernst and Eduard, of Leipsic, with whom there thus began a long friendship. Influenced by his new friends, Hoppe, the next year, betook himself to Leipsic and entered the classes of W. Weber in physics, E. H. Weber in physiology and anatomy, and of Eduard Weber in nerve and muscular physiology. He attended, also, Erdmann's lectures in organic chemistry and Lehmann's in physiological chemistry and pharmacology. In the spring of 1850 he went to Berlin, and the same year took his doctorate, with a thesis entitled On the Structure of Cartilage and on Chondrin. This thesis and Hoppe-Seyler's subsequent work in the same direction, which confirmed previously expressed views of Virchow, attracted the favorable notice of the great pathologist, who thereafter became to young Hoppe a helpful friend.

He was approved as practicing physician in 1851, spent some time in Prague in the study of obstetrics, returned to Berlin, and entered practice. He found little liking for this, and in 1854 was appointed prosector in anatomy in Greifswald, where he became later Privatdocent. His personal relations here not proving to be of the pleasantest, and the outlook for the future being anything but promising, Hoppe resolved to go to America, and wrote Virchow to that effect. The latter, however, induced him to remain, promised him a position in his new laboratory, and soon had him appointed assistant. Here his time at first was so taken up by students that he was only able to carry on his chemical studies on Sundays. Again Virchow came to the rescue, had a second assistant appointed, and put Hoppe in charge of a laboratory of pathological chemistry. He was appointed extraordinary professor in 1860, and his laboratory quickly became the center of physiological chemistry in the world. To it came Kühne, Alexander Schmidt, v. Recklinghausen, Leyden, Wilson Fox, Botkin, and many others.

In 1861 he was called to the chair of applied chemistry at Tübingen, where he was shortly made full professor. His laboratory here was of the most primitive description. It was located in the former kitchen of the old castle on top of the hill. The big chimney place, and the spits, were converted into appliances for chemical research. Here began a most fruitful period of Hoppe-Seyler's career; from this laboratory appeared much of his best work. Among the students who gathered about Hoppe-Seyler here were Miescher,