THE HISTORY OF THE LABORATORY is an important but neglected aspect of early modern science. To ask where and when the laboratory first appeared as a distinctive place for the pursuit of the study of nature raises questions to which, as yet, there are no clear-cut answers. Even the etymology of the word laboratory is obscure: the Latin noun laboratorium, from which the vernacular cognates are derived, was certainly not of classical origin. There is evidence of medieval usage, but it appears that it was not until the late sixteenth century that the word took on something like its modern meaning. Indications are that the laboratory was at first linked exclusively with alchemy and chemistry; only gradually, it seems, was the term extended to describe all those distinctive places where the manipulative investigation of natural phenomena was carried out. 1 Certainly any broad investigation of the development of the laboratory in early modern science must include not only the chemistry laboratory but also the anatomy theater, the cabinet of curiosities, the botanical garden, and the astronomical observatory.

The etymological novelty of the word laboratorium, together with the laboratory's early associations with alchemy and chemistry, points to a deeper significance of the topic. The appearance of the laboratory is indicative of a new mode of scientific inquiry, one that involves the observation and manipulation of nature by means of specialized instruments, techniques, and apparatuses that require manual skills as well as conceptual knowledge for their construction and deployment. Not that the science of antiquity, or that of the Middle Ages, was