378 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



but here, six years have passed, and behold! the whole subject has be- 

 come suddenly clearer. Our new insight into the problem has not 

 come easily, and I must pay special tribute to our colleagues in Europe 

 and in China, who have had the courage to carry on their investigations 

 in the face of enormous discouragements and practical difficulties, and 

 sometimes even in secrecy and at the peril of their lives. 



It is amazing that so much has been accomplished under such ad- 

 verse circumstances. The details of the physiology of the individual 

 elements of the nervous system have, in the past, seemed most obscure, 

 and we have had to infer the outlines of the metabolic processes which 

 occurred there from data gathered from other tissues. But it now 

 seems safe to say that our picture of the metabolism and the mecha- 

 nism of action of neurones is more complete than our knowledge of 

 any other tissue, and the methods of study which were originally con- 

 fined to neurophysiology are being extended to other physiologic 

 problems. 



It is particularly gratifying to me that a clinical neurologist should 

 be permitted to open this meeting. Clinical neurology used to be con- 

 sidered a purely diagnostic specialty, a hopeless field of medicine, 

 which consisted in little more than a meditation on disease. We are 

 beginning now to be able to do a little more about the disorders of the 

 nervous system, but we can make progress only as we possess insight. 

 The physiologic methods of study which have been devised and applied 

 by the distinguished scientists I see before me, and the facts they have 

 elicited are, I am sure, the surest guide we possess to advances in 

 therapeutic methods. This is a new chapter, not only in neurophysi- 

 ology, but in pharmacology, clinical medicine, and, perhaps, even for 

 the dark territories of psychiatry. 



We are grateful to The New York Academy of Sciences, and especially 

 to the executive secretary, Mrs. Miner, for having organized so eflfi- 

 ciently and made possible this symposium. We were fortunate in hav- 

 ing the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, and we express our 

 gratitude to Dr. Lambert for his advice and active cooperation. 



I should also like to thank very warmly Dr. Raymond Zwemer who, 

 through his association with the State Department, helped us to over- 

 come many difficulties. 



A few words about the program. The purpose of the symposium is 

 not to present recent data alone, but to give an opportunity for dis- 

 cussing some of the fundamental aspects and problems. There is so 

 much to say that we have filled the program perhaps unduly full, and 

 still have been unable to find time for many investigators whom we 



