Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/72

54 Chemistry in the University of Giessen. A new chair was established for him, and as a laboratory he received a room, as he expresses it, with four walls. Great was the opposition against this new professor; for what was chemistry? Chemistry was no science, nobody knew anything of chemistry, nobody would have it. Moreover, the appointment had not been made in the regular way, therefore the whole of the authorities of the university set themselves against it. The consequence was that the majority of that university persecuted that man for twenty-seven years; and, no matter what was his reputation, the amount of his work, or the importance of his position, for twenty-seven years this man could never once be made Rector of the University of Giessen. But where are the opposing influences now? History will not mention their names. Their ultramontane participators tried to decry the great man as an atheist and materialist, and by that means to remove from him the assistance of the state, and to diminish his chance of gaining a living. But he was too strong for all of them. In the year 1826 he was appointed Professor in Ordinary, a promotion by which he became a fixed servant of the state and a fixed member of the university. In that year he married Henrietta Moldenhauer, a most amiable lady, who now survives him.

Now comes the period of work which lasted to the year 1834. The work itself I will not now enter upon, but we will, in future lectures, see what was the nature of that work. We will perform before your eyes some of those operations by which that work has become of the utmost importance to mankind at large; and you can then see how, from a small point, there can be a light shed upon the largest problems of science.

In this year 1834, however, Liebig fell ill from overwork and anxiety. A portrait, which was taken at that time by the now deceased painter Engel, gives evidence of that, and I remember that the late Prof. Zamminer told me that he had seen Liebig about that time taking short walks in the evening air, looking pale and haggard, like a man in consumption, with little spots of hectic on his cheeks, and that his friends were afraid he would soon die. At that time he retired from Giessen for a while, and went to Baden-Baden, in the hope of recruiting his health. The patience which he had exercised for many years, under the most narrow arrangements, then gave way, and he asked for the building of a new lecture-room, the arrangement of a proper laboratory, and for an increase of salary. All was refused by the narrow-minded Government of Hesse-Darmstadt, through that close-minded man, the then chancellor, Von Linde. Then Liebig wrote to Von Linde a letter, in which, after the introduction, he continues thus: