Liebig

lee'big Justus (1803-1873), an eminent German scientist. He was born at Darmstadt 1803. First a student, then an apothecary, then a student again, he studied in Paris with Gay-Lussac, became professor of chemistry at Giessen, and ended his days, in 1873, as a professor of chemistry in the University of Munich. Liebig was famous not only as a chemist but as a teacher, and drew students from all over the world. Many young Americans went to Giessen and Munich to profit by his instruction and bring home his ideas. Liebig is considered the father of the laboratory method of teaching. Laboratories for research were numerous, but laboratories for students--for beginners--were an innovation.

Liebig laid the foundation for scientific agriculture by showing that plants draw their nourishment from the mineral constituents of air and soil. Corn demands certain constituents and drains the soil of these constituents, which must be replaced or corn can not be grown. As well try to dip water from an empty barrel as to try to raise corn on soil from which corn-growing material has been exhausted. Manures, applied to land, decompose, that is, break up into plant food and make soil fertile again. A farmer who takes from his soil and does not put back will sooner or later have a poor, unproductive farm. Manures are valuable, not because they have been a part of animal or plant life, but because they break up into minerals. The right minerals, even though they have not been parts of animals or plants, are just as desirable. Pure lime, for instance, fresh from the kiln, is a valuable field dressing in proper quantities. All these statements now seem axiomatic, but they were not clear in Liebig's day.

Liebig and his immediate disciples placed human food or diet on a scientific foundation. The classification of foods given in a school physiology is practically that established by Liebig--food for bone, food for muscle, and food for bodily heat. Some foods furnish many needed elements; some few. Milk is the one article of diet that supplies all needed elements. Liebig taught that lean meat preserved by salting loses a large part of its nutritive value, being then in about the condition of meat that has been used for soup. Liebig's "extract of beef" and "children's food" are important articles of diet for sale everywhere. The particular value of the extract lies in the possibility of transportation under circumstances which render the carriage of fresh meat an impossibility. The valuable part of beef could be brought to Europe from far off Australia and Argentina in tin cans or glazed earthen jars. The invention of refrigerator ships and refrigerator cars has superseded the Liebig method in part.

Liebig's services to the chemist by way of inventing apparatus and methods of work are too technical and extensive for this place. His friend and student, Hoffman, says: "If we sum up in our minds all that Liebig did for the good of mankind,--in industries, in agriculture, and in the laws of health,--we may confidently assert that no other man of learning, in his course through the world, has ever left a more valuable legacy behind him."