174 THE WORK OF THE DIGESTIVE GLANDS. 



investigation. Thus the necessity for an EXPERIMENTAL THERAPEUTICS 

 spontaneously arises, disregarding for the moment its practical aims. 

 The subject itself affords a new and fruitful method for the study 

 of living events, since it presents the phenomena of life, which it 

 is our duty to investigate, from a new side, and often reveals to 

 us gaps in our physiological knowledge. The following example may 

 explain my meaning. A mechanic only lays aside the study of a 

 machine when he is able to take the parts asunder and put them back 

 again in their original places. Physiology should be able to do 

 much the same. No one can say that he fully comprehends the 

 physiology of an organ till he is able to restore its disordered function 

 to a normal state. Hence, experimental therapeutics is essentially a 

 test of physiology. 



I should wish, however, to avoid a misunderstanding. What I 

 have said now about experimental therapeutics, and previously about 

 pathology, is by no means new. It is only an expression of the prevail- 

 ing opinion of medical science. Undoubtedly, the great honour of having, 

 by the experimental method, united in reality the whole of medicine, 

 is due to modern bacteriology. This science is at one and the same time 

 physiology, pathology, and therapeutics. It proceeds from beginning to 

 end along experimental lines. Bacteriology, the youngest and most 

 vigorous branch of the series, is the only one which has developed to 

 the natural and full extent of its own inhei-ent capacity, unfettered by 

 the traditional settings and mouldings which constituted, for the older 

 investigators, lines of separation between the different fields of work. 



Our own investigations in experimental therapeutics, to which I now 

 proceed, are for the present not very important. But we may, I think, 

 cherish a well-grounded hope of expanding this method of research 

 in the future to an extent commensurate with the results of our in- 

 vestigations in physiology and experimental pathology. It is natural 

 that upon our first entry into the new field we should allow ourselves 

 to be guided by the experience of clinical therapeutics, but I am con- 

 vinced that our new therapeutics will soon grow to be an indepen- 

 dent source of experimental physiological and pathological knowledge. 

 Then, the experimental therapeutics, born of the laboratory, supported 

 by scientific knowledge, and in every way self-competent, will be able 

 to give valuable indications to the clinician. 



As the first example of our therapeutics, may I bring before you 

 the treatment and care of the dogs in which the vagi nerves were 

 divided in the neck. In these animals, from the sudden cutting-out of 

 its most important secretory and motor nerve, almost every trace of 

 digestive action on the part of the stomach disappears during the earlier 

 periods. The ingested food soon undergoes decomposition, and this in 



