Katherine Ford, in the History of Science Centre’s blog, writes about the history and advantages of science laboratories:
I came across an unnamed manuscript dated c.1859, discussing the various effects of certain solutions on worms and other small things. What caught my eye, though, was the reference to a worm, post-dunking in a chemical solution, being “placed on a soup plate”. Generally, a worm is not something you wish to find on a soup plate, and I wondered how the other members of the household would have felt about this use of domestic items. This reminded me of an anecdote told by forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass in Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Body Farm, recounting his wife’s – quite understandable – consternation when he chose to boil human remains on their kitchen stove… using her pots. He then did it a second time, but unfortunately, he left the pot unattended and it overflowed….
The creation of the laboratory then, provided the scientist with their own space, and over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century it moved out of the domestic space…
(via @JenLucPiquant)