2i8 NATURAL SCIENCE. October. 



Pasteur, Behring, and others in preventive and curative inoculation, 

 and had a word in season on the matter of vaccination. In conclusion, 

 he spoke of Metschnikoff 's work on phagocytosis in terms of acceptance 

 with which some may not wholly agree. The share in producing 

 immunity which the phagocytic powers of leucocytes seem to bear, 

 may be, and possibly is, very considerable ; but that it is the main 

 defensive means possessed by the body against micro-organisms is 

 certainly still open to question. Be that as it may, the debt which 

 modern medicine and surgery owe to science is very clearly brought out 

 by Sir Joseph's quiet and dispassionate survey in his Presidential 

 Address. 



The Old and the New Physiology. 



The interesting and suggestive address given last January by 

 Professor Burdon Sanderson at the Royal Institution on " Ludwig 

 and Modern Physiology," affords much food for reflection. Its main 

 theme is the immense and continuous progress which physiology has 

 made since it has been pursued on strictly experimental lines from a 

 frankly physico-chemical standpoint. To Ludwig more than to any 

 other man, as Professor Sanderson shows, is physiology indebted from 

 its modern foundations, aims, and methods ; and this, not only for 

 the clearness and definiteness of his own aims and his own brilliant 

 powers as an experimentalist, but also from the intense and unselfish 

 personal influence which he exercised over his pupils, and which has 

 made the Leipzig School famous throughout the world. It was 

 Ludwig who gave the death blow to the old " vitalist " doctrines which 

 had previously animated physiology, and the vagueness of which had 

 proved so unfruitful in results. The sketch of Ludwig's career and 

 life-work serves Professor Sanderson as the text for some instructive 

 remarks on " The Old Vitalism and the New." It is evident that he 

 is not much in sympathy with the so-called " new vitalism " of Bunge, 

 Driesch, and others, though he extends towards it some degree of 

 tolerance because it does not interfere with the strictly experimental 

 methods which have hitherto proved so admirable in their results. 

 Yet no one who has read Professor Bunge's fascinating book on 

 Physiological and Pathological Chemistry can fail to have been 

 impressed by the case which he makes out for something above 

 and beyond the ordinary known physico-chemical laws of inorganic 

 nature for the interpretation of even such simple vital phenomena 

 as are presented by unicellular organisms, and of which he 

 instances the power of food-selection shown by Vampyrdla, and the 

 extraordinary capacity shown hy Avcella for righting itself, when upset, 

 by the spontaneous local development of gas bubbles in its protoplasm. 

 To suppose that such facts are to be explained by postulating a " vital 

 force," is to commit the error of the old " pre-scientific " physiology. 

 But the proof of the existence in the living cell of a force or forces 



