Dearborn, A Laboratory-Course in Physiology Based on Daphnia etc 



is unique individuality, an everywhere mutually interdependent 

 single mechanism, not a chest of independent tools. This synthetic- 

 tendency in physiology, and in biology in general, applies not alone 

 to discussions of the parts of a single animal, but also to the poin- 

 ting-out of the unification and inherent similarity of all that lives. 

 The recent books by the plant-physiologists have taken us far 

 toward this desirable goal, while the devotees of the new science 

 of animal behaviour and the physiologic zoologists, yes, even the 

 protozoologists, have taken us further yet. Today, then, as we 

 never could before the days of these and of the physical chemists, 

 do we realize how universal and how minute is the unification of 

 parts into the unit of vitality, the animal, and how much alike, 

 essentially, all animals are 1 ). 



The brief course in laboratory physiology suggested here (already 

 worked out in detail for use by the student) has perfect theoretic 

 sanction therefore as a new method in the teaching of physiologic 

 science, - it is clearly a licentiate of evolutionary philosophy. In 

 directer phrase, the fundamental doctrine and many of the facts 

 of mammalian physiology can be demonstrated in animals far below 

 the mammals in complexity and vastly smaller in size. Vital 

 mechanics uses relatively few reall indifferent ways and means. The 

 protozoa and especially the small Crustacea and rotifers are for the 

 purposes of elementary physiology far more similar to man than 

 their size- contrast would imply. The course as arranged at present 

 includes both physiology of a basal kind and a modicum of what 

 we may term physiologic anatomy, and furthermore something of 

 animal psychology, ever closer to physiology, as is inevitable. 

 With a wide choice and selection from the well-nigh infinite variety 

 of material known to the professional zoologist, there is no defi- 

 nable limit to its development in each of these three directions 

 within elementary bounds. 



As old-time physiologists, perhaps some of us have never 

 realized the exact status of our science in the mind of the people 

 at large. The antivivisectionist people have seen to it well that 

 the ,,average" man and most women and children shall consider 

 physiology a matter of (necessary) blood and forbidding ,,internal 

 workings" far beneath their proper interest. We have scarce had 

 a fair chance as yet to do our relatively new science justice in the 

 world's keen range of reputations, nor have we had time (so full 

 of life is our subject-matter and so teeming with interest), to pop- 

 ularize physiology and so give it its becoming place in the hierarchy 

 of human sciences. To do this, however, is more than our priv- 



1) See the author's "Text-Book of Human Physiology, Theoretic and 

 Practical", octavo, pp. 552 with 301 engravings and 9 colored plates, Philadelphia 

 and New York, Lea & Febiger, 1908. 



