58 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



the feelings accompanying responses to stimuli partake in the 

 reflex character of the responses themselves. 



It may not at first sight seem that there is anything very 

 unusual in this idea. Yet in point of fact it is of a most revo- 

 lutionary character. Because many ailments show themselves 

 in the first instance as modifications of sensation — for example, 

 as pain or exhaustion — and if we are able to determine which 

 reflexes have been disturbed or modified in order to produce 

 them, we are a long way on the road leading to recognition of 

 the primary cause of the disease. We are, too, approaching a 

 position at which new light on mental processes may await us. 



The accepted view of a reflex act excludes consciousness 

 and so separates mental from physical life. The St. Andrews 

 view brings these two into close approximation by regarding 

 consciousness as, in part at least, an expression of physical 

 achievement or physical failure. For pain and exhaustion are 

 both conscious feelings. 



In the physical realm too a correlation of organic function 

 is effected the moment symptoms are looked on as modifications 

 of the normal. If, for example, we take such a condition as 

 palpitation of the heart, we perceive that it may have many 

 entirely different causes and that the majority of these will 

 lie outside of the heart itself. For the normal reflex, which 

 results in a more active beating of this organ, can, clearly, be 

 modified at several different places, at the periphery, centrally, 

 and along the course of the nerves, as well as in the cardiac 

 area. Thus poisoning with, for example, alcohol or the toxins 

 of disease is brought into relation to such a localised condition 

 as a primary myocarditis. 



From the point of view of the physician the distinction 

 between one kind of interference with the reflex and another 

 kind will be made in terms of associated phenomena — by means 

 of what Sir James Mackenzie calls " the law of associated 

 phenomena." For symptoms occur " not in single spies, but 

 in battahons " — if only we were capable of recognising them. 



This work represents a definite pushing out into the un- 

 charted country of disease, a country which can be known 

 only by the unaided senses. It is the claim of those who are 

 carrying on the work that it demands for its successful accom- 

 plishment the peculiar opportunities and circumstances of 

 general practice. 



• ••••• 



The appointment of an official committee to inquire into 

 the effects of sunlight in health and disease marks a step in the 

 direction of a new understanding of environment as it affects 

 human welfare. The committee consists of Prof. Bayliss, 

 F.R.S. (chairman), Mr. J. E. Barnard, Dr. H. H. Dale, F.R.S., 



