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UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN
approval of one of the assistants. At the end of the year eaeli student has to deliver a report concerning the experiments performed during the year.
General Research Laboratory
The general research laboratory, 12 meters by 9 meters, is situated at the intersection of the two wings of the building and is designed for work of a more general character. It is here that young workers commence their research work. They can have at every moment the help of the assistants and can be controlled very easily.
A large table 4.5 by 1.5 meters in the middle of the room, with shafting driven by an electromotor, and drawers with all kind of clamps, rods, glass, corks, and other supplies has a switchboard with different electric currents. Other free tables and fixed tables in front of the windows offer plenty of place to arrange all kinds of experiments.
Cupboards for instruments of general use, a blackboard, a fume cupboard, sinks, and benches form the furniture of the room, which is lighted abundantly on two sides. Balances of different sensitivities are placed upon stone plates fixed in the wall.
This laboratory is surrounded by a ring of other rooms designed for work in relation to general research. These consist of a room for physicochemical work, a dark room, a room with incubators, and a room for the histological research work necessitated by physiological experiments. The room for physicochemical work is situated on the north to avoid as much as possible temperature changes during the day.
On cement blocks is placed a large centrifuge of Boulitte running without noise 3,000 revolutions a minute and with a capacity of 300 cc. There are different cupboards for instruments and chemicals. The space between two cupboards is arranged as a titration table.
Director’s Department
The director of the laboratory has at his disposal two rooms, an office and a private laboratory. In the office is a cupboard for fine and precious instruments and a large cupboard with a great number of drawers, containing the private collection of reprints of the director. This collection is classed following the subject so that it is very useful and easily consulted. A desk is in the middle of the room. The private laboratory 10.45 by 8 meters is employed for the private work of the director and for strangers who come to work in the Institute.
For furniture we have fixed tables with sinks in front of the windows, two free tables in the middle of the room, and at a distance of 1.20 meters of the main wall, a large piece of furniture which is composed on
the front side of three cupboards united by shelves and a large table so that it can be utilized as a titration table and may be employed for preparing all kinds of experiments. The upper part of the cupboards has lockers, the lower part, drawers of different size.
The space between this piece of furniture and the wall has been fitted up as a dark room by covering it above and closing it on both sides by doors. Small trap-doors between the dark room and table outside allow connections to be made with galvanometers in the dark room. Here there are also small tables with sinks for all kind of work such as polarimetry, etc.
LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
The library 5.45 meters deep by 10.45 meters wide has light from two adjacent sides. Before the windows of one of these sides are placed fixed tables. Two other tables serve as reading-tables in the middle of the room. The sides opposite the light are completely covered with cupboards. A platform has been supplied at a distance of half the height of the room so that we obtain two ranges of cupboards. Those on the level of the room serve for receiving the collection of instruments, the upper range is used for bookcases for the special books and periodicals. The books that are in general use are placed beneath the tables in special cupboards near the windows.
Between the windows is a cupboard containing the card index of the reprints of the private collection of the director and of the Institute. The system provides a special way for marking the most important articles on different physiological problems. There is a special cupboard on the ground level for the current numbers of books and periodicals that are not yet bound.
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY
The Department of Electrophysiology is situated in a quiet corner of the basement of the building, far from all noise and in so far as possible free from vibration which has been reduced to a minimum by separating the building from the street and by making pillars of masonry on the bottom, which do not touch the floor and which support the very sensitive instruments. The earth, dug out on the front and on the two sides of the building, has been added at the rear of the building.
The pillars are stone tables with a thick top of freestone measuring 2 by 1 meters. These tables are very practical because all instruments placed on them remain in an unaltered position. On one of these tables is placed the electrocardiograph with all the accompanying instruments.
The electrocardiograph is of the Wertheim Salomon-son design; we have added a water cooling apparatus so that we can have an electromagnetic field between