chemistry for students of medicine. With the reorganization of the preclinical work of the School of Nursing, the department was requested to co-operate in the development of a survey course in chemistry for nurses, to include the fundamentals of inorganic, organic, and biological chemistry as a foundation for the clinical courses in medicine, therapeutics, and dietetics. Such a course, which included laboratory exercises, lectures, and recitations, was begun in the fall of 1925.
In 1928 the faculty of the School of Dentistry requested that arrangements be made to offer lecture instruction to students in dentistry, and with the institution of the four-year curriculum in dentistry, laboratory instruction was, in 1935, also made available to the students of this group. At the request of the School of Education, a course similar to that required of students in the School of Nursing, but slightly more inclusive, was offered in 1936 to professional students in the curriculum of physical education for women. The Department of Biological Chemistry, in addition to the instruction in the required courses in the Medical School, has thus co-operated with other professional groups — in nursing, dentistry, and education. In addition, many students in the College of Pharmacy, the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and the Graduate School elect courses and receive their instruction in sections with students of medicine. Biological chemistry is also included in the list of courses recommended for students qualifying for positions as hospital technicians and in related work.
Advanced students have been admitted to the department as candidates for the higher degrees of master of science and doctor of philosophy in the Graduate School. Many students in this group have served, at some period in their graduate work, as assistants in the required laboratory courses for medical students. In the first fifteen years of its existence as a separate department, thirty-nine students received the degree of master of science, and thirty-two the degree of doctor of philosophy, in biological or physiological chemistry. These graduates are occupying important positions in university education or research in hospitals or research institutes, in government laboratories, and in commercial work.
In research, Associate Professor Adam Arthur Christman (Grinnell '17, Ph.D. Illinois '22) has studied various phases of purine metabolism and has published a new and simple method for the quantitative determination of carbon monoxide in blood — a method which has been employed extensively, particularly in medicolegal work. Associate Professor Henry Charles Eckstein (Illinois '15, Ph.D. Yale '23) has been an investigator in the field of lipids, and in 1925 he published the results of an exhaustive study of the composition of human fat. Along other lines, he has contributed to the knowledge of the sterols in epidermal structures, lipid metabolism in xanthoma, and the relation between the lipids of the diet and those of the tissues. Assistant Professor Herbert O. Calvery (B.S. Greenville '19, A.B. Illinois '21, Ph.D. ibid. '24), who studied in the Prague laboratories of Professor E. Waldschmidt-Leitz under the tenure of a Guggenheim fellowship, interested himself in the chemistry and enzymatic degradation of protein. His study of egg albumin was one of the first studies of the enzymatic hydrolysis of a native protein in which the newer methods of enzyme investigation were used. Miss Lila Miller (Wisconsin '26, Ph.D. Michigan '36), who worked in the Carlsberg laboratories under the direction of Professor S. P. L. Sørensen, continued these investigations.
