SUKGICAL METHODS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 15 



several glands, both with regard to periods of activity and quantitative 

 relationships of work should be. This can only be achieved, however, 

 when the activity of all or many glands is simultaneously observed on 

 one and the same animal. 



In bringing the description of methods in this lecture to a close, I 

 consider it essential to point out the importance to physiology of 

 surgical technique. It appears to me that the methods of surgery, as 

 contrasted with those of vivisection, must obtain unquestioned recogni- 

 tion in the series of procedures which we adopted : 1 mean in the per- 

 formance the conception and carrying out of more or less complicated 

 operations having for their object either the disconnection of certain 

 organs, the ready observation of deeply seated processes in the 

 organism, the severance of existing relationships between organs, or 

 rice versa, the establishment of new ones, etc. With these must go hand 

 in hand the means of healing the injury inseparable from the operation, 

 and of restoring the animal to its normal condition so far as the nature 

 of the procedure permits. 



Such a discussion of operative methods appears to me necessary, 

 chiefly because it becomes more evident every day that, in the 

 ordinary method of the so-called " acute " experiment, carried out at 

 one sitting, and complicated by free bleeding, many sources of error 

 lie concealed. The crude damage done to the integrity of the organism 

 sets up a number of inhibitory influences which react upon the functions 

 of its different parts. The body as a whole, in which an enormous 

 number of different organs are linked together in the most delicate 

 fashion for the performance of a common and purposive work, cannot 

 in the nature of things remain indifferent to forces calculated to destroy 

 it. It must, in its own interests, restrain some functions while others 

 are allowed free course, and thus, by appropriately economising its 

 energies, rescue that which is possible to save. 



This circumstance was formerly, and still is, a great hindrance to the 

 efforts of analytical physiology, while, in the developments of synthetic 

 physiology, where it is of value to determine the real course of this 

 or that phenomenon on the uninjured and normal organism, it 

 continues to be an unavoidable obstacle. Operative discovery, as a 

 means of physiological research, has by no means been played out. On 

 the contrary, it is only just coming into full activity, as is testified by 

 the achievements of the present day. For example, we need only mention 

 the extirpation of the pancreas by Minkowski ; the transference of 

 the portal blood into the vena cava by Eck ; and, finally, the amazing 

 operations of Goltz, in which he removed bit by tit the various parts of 

 the central nervous system. Have not many physiological questions 

 been thereby settled, and do not innumerable others arise from the 



