182 THE WORK OF THE DIGESTIVE GLANDS. 



narrow range of the laboratory that they can be recruited. Because 

 of this, it is your duty, both in the scientific institute, as well as in 

 life generally, to encourage the beginners of laboratory work, since 

 specialisation in the laboratory affords them, afterwards, many better 

 chances in life. 



It is known that clinicians, therapeutists, and surgeons in many 

 cases turn to the fruitful method of experiment, whether it be to 

 analyse a pathological process, to make clear the mode of action of a 

 therapeutic measure, or to test a proposed surgical procedure. Such 

 endeavours naturally are to be hailed with pleasure. The clinicians, 

 even more than the physiologists, feel the necessity at the present time 

 of working out the problems in the laboratory which they encounter in 

 the hospital, whether they be of a pathological or therapeutic nature. 

 Consequently, in by far the greater number of instances the initiative 

 to investigations of an experimental pathological or experimental thera- 

 peutic nature at present proceeds from clinicians. This is to their 

 great credit, and will ever remain so. Nevertheless, with the clinician, 

 this kind of work has always to take a second place ; it fills the leisure 

 hours which his first duty, the care of the sick, leaves to him. Work 

 in the laboratory, however, demands a full surrender ; requires that the 

 worker shall devote his whole energies to it. Hence, I maintain that 

 our special departments of experimental pathology and experimental 

 therapeutics (for, considered from a broad standpoint, they are in 

 methods and conception nothing else than branches of physiology) 

 should be given the most favourable conditions and the most indepen- 

 dent position possible. In the curriculum of medical science there 

 should everywhere be three chairs given to experimental physio- 

 logy one to normal, one to pathological, and one to therapeutic 

 physiology. 



And now to turn away from the fostering care required by science. 

 Every human being will welcome the founding and erection of institutes 

 of all kinds devoted to the care of the sick, whether they spring from 

 private or public initiative. These institutes are, on the one hand, 

 places for benevolent activity, for in them the sick, that is to say, 

 persons who, in the struggle for existence, have encountered greater 

 or less injury persons sacrificed to the general conditions of life 

 are taken care of. On the other hand, these institutes are fields of 

 work for people who in life are truly called upon to bear an excessive 

 burden ; to solve problems which are as yet insoluble. Gentlemen, 

 I am making no misuse of my words, I have in mind life with all its 

 great powers of adaptation, life as it concerns the majority of man- 

 kind ; and this, after all, is what must engage our attention. Think of 

 one who mentally grasps the unfathomable depths of his problem, and 



