LUDWIG AND MODERN PHYSIOLOGY. n 



him in planning the Leipzig Institute to divide it into three 

 parts, experimental (in the more restricted sense), chemical 

 and histological. Well aware that it was impossible for a 

 man who is otherwise occupied to maintain his familiarity 

 with the technical details of Histology and Physiological 

 Chemistry, he placed these departments under the charge 

 of younger men capable of keeping them up to the rapidly 

 advancing standard of the time, his relations with his 

 coadjutors being such that he had no difficulty in retaining 

 his hold of the threads of the investigation to which these 

 special lines of inquiry were contributory. 



It is scarcely necessary to say that as an experimenter 

 Ludwig was unapproachable. The skill with which he 

 carried out difficult and complicated operations, the care 

 with which he worked, his quickness of eye and certainty 

 of hand were qualities which he had in common with great 

 surgeons. In employing animals for experiment he strongly 

 objected to rough and ready methods, comparing them to 

 " firing a pistol into a clock to see how it works ". Every 

 experiment ought, he said, to be carefully planned and 

 meditated on beforehand, so as to accomplish its scientific 

 purpose and avoid the infliction of pain. To ensure this 

 he performed all operations himself, only rarely committing 

 the work to a skilled coadjutor. 



His skill in anatomical work was equally remarkable. 

 It had been acquired in early days, and appeared throughout 

 his life to have given him very great pleasure, for Mosso 

 tells how, when occupying the room adjoining that in which 

 Ludwig was working as he usually did by himself, he heard 

 the outbursts of glee which accompanied each successful step 

 in some difficult anatomical investigation. 



Let us now examine more fully the part which Ludwig 

 played in the revolution of ideas as to the nature of vital 

 processes which, as we have seen, took place in the middle 

 of the present century. 



Although, as we shall see afterwards, there were many 

 men who, before Ludwig's time, investigated the phenomena 

 of life from the physical side, it was he and the contem- 

 poraries who were associated with him who first clearly 



