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Caption: Booklet - Addresses from Inauguration of Noyes
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seemed of more value, the < herniate of thi • period turned their attention more and more away from alchemy and toward medicii and pharmacy. Wo may well doubt if their labors were much to the advanta ! of the suffering humanity of their time. Their crude empiricism and their wild and often m; stical speculations as to the proc is which go on in the body in health and disease were a poor basis for medical treatment. Doubtless many a poor patient fell a victim to their imperfect knowled •. Thus far our science, such as it was, had followed utilitarian ends. The alchemist sought for gold—the medical chemist for new medicines. An embarrassing question often asked of a scientific man who has spent months or years of work over some problem is " W h a t is the use?"—"Of what value will be the solution of the problem, if you succeed?" The contrast between the product of this thousand years of utilitarian science and the material results which have accrued during the two and a half centuries of better ideals is a sufficient answer, even from the material point of v i e w _ ] 3 n t I wish to protest against measuring the value of scientific work on the bads of dollars and cents. About three hundred years ago there began to appear men who took an interest in the study of natural phenomena for the purpose of gaining a deeper insight, into the nature of the world about them, There were, at first,, very few men of this new type, and progress was slow in comparison with that of later times, hul it was rapid when compared with the time of I ho al
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