EXPERIMENTATION AND PHYSIOLOGY 







two hundred years men have been busy piling 

 up knowledge concerning these two conditions 

 until sufficient information has been accumu- 

 lated, which if applied would make them 

 obsolete diseases; but not until the present 

 decade, has man taken real practical interest 

 in its application. Now, out of this knowledge, 

 often gained from most humble sources, a great 

 and irresistible movement is in progress which 

 will not cease until typhoid and tuberculosis 

 have been driven from the face of the earth. 

 Who shall say but that some day man shall 

 also apply to himself the knowledge which he 

 has gained in the experimental breeding of 

 animals, and in some brighter day interest 

 himself as much in the propagation of splendid 

 men and women as he now evinces in thq 

 breeding of splendid horses and hogs. 



We should not leave this subject of physi- Nervous 

 ology without touching upon the physiology of system, 

 the nervous system. It has been a slow strug- 

 gle, this searching for the springs of our own 

 highest functions. Slow because of the pecul- 

 iar and extraordinary delicacy of the tissues 

 involved; difficult, because of the deep-rooted 

 superstitions and fanciful notions which had to 

 be overcome. Galen in the second century 



47 



