PHYSIOLOGY 



of his subject. He, like all hard-worked people, 

 used to take holidays, and, combining business 

 with pleasure, he not only went fishing for Rhine 

 salmon, but preserved the roes of the salmon for 

 chemical investigations, at which he worked during 

 the succeeding winter months. In making out the 

 chemical composition of the roe of the salmon and 

 of other fishes, he laid the foundations for a correct 

 understanding of the pathology of gout. It seems 

 a long jump from salmon's roe to gout, but that was 

 what it led to. I cannot trace, in the time that I 

 have, all the steps in the process, but the pathology 

 of gout, and the chemical changes that occur there 

 in connection with uric acid, all rest upon the 

 fundamental processes investigated by Miescher in 

 his work on the roe of the salmon. 



I will take only one more example from the 

 past, and this brings us nearer to the present. My 

 colleague Bayliss, of University College, was in- 

 terested for many years before the War in what we 

 are in the habit of calling colloids. It does not 

 matter very much to the non-physiologist what 

 colloids are. They are things like gum and glue 

 and gelatin, and they present a great many 

 interesting peculiarities which Bayliss examined. 

 Who could have dreamt, when he undertook this 

 purely academic piece of work, that he would, in 

 consequence thereof, be able to relieve the symp- 

 toms of what is called ' shock,' which occurred so 



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