president's address. 829 



It has been contended that, notwithstanding the seeming ease 

 with which many of the phenomena of Hfe can be translated 

 into the language of physics and chemistry, we find whenever we 

 push the analysis of function far enough, that eventually we are 

 simply brought back again to the original problem with which 

 our analysis started, in the ultimate dependence of all bodily 

 process upon the life of the individual component cells of the 

 organism. 



Our progress — and after all it is progress — has consisted in 

 pursuing the secret of living activity somewhat deeper into the 

 recesses of organisation. And just when we seem to have elimi- 

 nated something of the mystery of living process, we find that 

 we have only succeeded in storming the outworks, and that the 

 citadel of the vitalistic position yet lies securely intrenched 

 behind the defences of the living cell. 



In other words, the essential problem of physiology has merely 

 been transferred from the cell complex, which forms the body or 

 the bodily organ, to the more remote individual organism or cell, 

 which for us in the meantime forms the unit alike of structure 

 and function. 



Even more than this may be claimed by the advocate of 

 vitalism. For the interactions, correlations and co-ordinations 

 subsisting between the component cells and parts of an organism, 

 as in the case of a developing embryo, have not hitherto shown 

 themselves amenable to a mechanical interpretation. 



On the other hand, it may be said that recent experimental 

 work on the mechanical conditions of developmental processes is 

 making satisfactory progress in this very direction. And even if 

 we admit that in no case has the progress of physiological investi- 

 gation enabled us actually to reduce living process to terms of 

 chemistry and physics, this need not l^lind us to the wonderful 

 and significant advance which the effort to do so has procured. 

 It is not too much to say that every year further facts of organi- 

 sation and additional events in life-processes are having assigned 

 to them their physical and chemical conditions, and are thus so 



