Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/56

 “very rapid and elementary” course delivered to the juniors by Professor Webster, who had succeeded Professor Dexter in that department of the Medical School. The elementary character of the work certainly produced great rapidity on some occasions. For the following vignette of collegiate chemical instruction in that era I am indebted to President Eliot:

Thus, for nearly a generation, Holden’s despised lecture-rooms served only for the dirty work of the curriculum. In 1850, however, the general march of improvements reached its drowsy corner of the Yard, and a fresh series of alterations was valiantly undertaken. The west porch and the east staircase well were both removed, and the stairs placed inside the main building. (It may have been at this time that the pilasters on the eastern wall lost both their caps and their bases.) The west door received a semicircular heading to match the windows. The upper floor was all thrown into the