PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND ITS CONNECTIONS. 9 



accompanying organic changes in muscles, nerves, glands, 

 etc., wherever a directed action takes place, is a magnificent 

 trunk line of connection between physics and biology. It 

 is at present dreadfully encumbered by a medico-therapeutic 

 jargon of Galvanisation, Faradisation, Franklinisation. 

 What is required is measurement. Measurement of 

 strength of current, distribution of current, duration of 

 current, variation of current, in fact, of the nature of the 

 current and not a vague description of how it was produced. 

 A Leyden jar discharge, the so-called Franklinisation, may 

 be short or long, continuous or oscillatory according to 

 circumstances. It is the nature of the current and not its 

 mode of generation that is of importance. A poor nerve 

 only knows what passes through it. Unless the patient see 

 and is nervously affected by the presence of a big electrical 

 machine the nerve never knows what the source of its 

 agony is. 



Modern investigations on the nature of light will 

 probably bear fruit in connection with biology, chemistry, 

 and cosmology, though the connecting roads are at present 

 but suggested tracks. It has been suggested that the rods 

 and cones in the retina are about the sized structure that 

 would, by ordinary conduction, resonate to the electro- 

 magnetic vibrations that affect our eyes. The transparency 

 of these structures would require the vibration to be a 

 displacement vibration and not a conduction current, or 

 else that the current was conducted round the cones by the 

 black pigment in which they are immersed, and whose 

 blackness was evidence of its conducting power. Whatever 

 is the true explanation, the matter seems capable of in- 

 vestigation. The whole " field of chemical optics and 

 electrolysis is open for investigation. Why does light 

 cause combination of hydrogen and chlorine? Is this and 

 allied phenomena, in which it would seem that the primary 

 action was the breaking down of a molecular group, 

 connected with ordinary electrolysis ? Here, certainly, we 

 want more light to see the road. Do magnetic forces, as 

 well as electric ones, come into play in building up molecules 

 and solids? If Mr. Larmor's suggestion that atoms are 



