_:vb7258707 "1904, H.G. Wells, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth\u200E[1], Book I, Chapter 1:"@en . _:vb7258707 "[\u2026] he was propounding an improvement of Professor Armstrong's Heuristic method, whereby at the cost of three or four hundred pounds' worth of apparatus, a total neglect of all other studies and the undivided attention of a teacher of exceptional gifts, an average child might with a peculiar sort of thumby thoroughness learn in the course of ten or twelve years almost as much chemistry as one could get in one of those objectionable shilling text-books that were then so common\u2026."@en .