August 2S, 1879] 



NATURE 



409 



small in amount, are great in worth, from the mode of their 

 distriljution ; and serve in a limited degree as an encouragement, 

 though not an endowment, of research. One proof of the 

 value of this method of subsidising unremunerative work by 

 small grants distributed by the master workmen themselves is 

 given by the fact that the sum of 4,000/. annually contributed 

 by the Government of the United Kingdom for the endowment 

 of research is distributed on the same plan by a Committee of the 

 Royal Society. 



The Third most important aim of our Association is, " to 

 obtain a more general attention to the objects and methods of 

 science, and the removal of any disadvantages of a public kind 

 which impede its progress." It is for this reason that the 

 Association travels from one to another of the great centres 

 of population and intellectual activity of the kingdom. Local 

 scientific societies and local museums are generated and regene- 

 rated in its path, local industries are for a time raised to a 

 higher level than that of money-getting, and every artisan may 

 learn how his own craft depends upon knowledge of the facts of 

 nature, and how he forms part of the great system of applied 

 science which is subduing the earth and all its powers to the use 

 of man. We wish to make science popular, not by deceiving 

 idlers into the belief that any thorough knowledge cin be easy, 

 but by exciting interest in its objects and appreciation of its 

 methods. In the popular evening lectures you will hear those 

 who are best qualified to speak upon their several subjects, not 

 preaching with the dry austerity of a pedant, but bringing their 

 ovra enthusiasm to kindle a contagious fire in those who 

 hear them. 



Endeavouring to aid in these objects, I shall in this introduc- 

 tory address offer you some considerations upon the bearing of 

 biology in general, and anatomy and physiology in particular, 

 upon national well-being and public interests. 



Biology is the science of the structure, the functions, the 

 distribution, and the succession in time of all living beings. If 

 the proper study of mankind be man, he has learnt late in the 

 inquiry that he can only understand himself by recognising that 

 he is but one in the vast network of organic creation ; that intel- 

 ligible human anatomy must be based upon comparative anatomy ; 

 that human physiology can only be approached as a braach of 

 general physiology, and that even the humblest mould or sea- 

 weed may furnish help to explain the most important problems of 

 human existence. 



The branch of physiology which is concerned with man, not 

 as an individual, but a family, the branch which we now call 

 Anthropology, is obviously related to practical politics, and it was 

 not without reason that the late illustrious pathologist Rokitansky 

 began a speech in the' Upper House of the Austrian Parliament 

 on the autonomy of the Bohemian nation with the words, 

 " The question really is whether the doctrine of Darwin be true 

 or no." 



In another department, that of psychology, the physiology of 

 the nervous system has already thrown more light upon the 

 mysterious phenomena of consciousness than was gained by the 

 acutest minds of all ages without the help of anatomical 

 methods. 



All the improvements of modern agriculture and stock- 

 breeding rest upon more or less fully understood scientific 

 jirinciples, and the more perfectly the results have been first 

 worked out in the laboratory the more safe and the more lucrative 

 will be their application in the field.' 



Still more important is the relation of physiology to the 

 national health. The commonplaces of hygiene which are now, 

 one may be thankful to say, taught, if not practised, in almost 

 every schoolroom and factory in England, are the direct results 

 of the abstruse researches of Boyle and Priestley, of Lavoisier 

 and Pasteur. Ages of experience did not teach mankind the 

 value of fresh air, or the innocence of clean water. Indeed, I 

 have myself heard astonishment expressed by a German pro- 

 fessor at the peculiar immunity with which English skins will 

 bear the daily and unstinted application of soap and water. 



If the art of keeping a community in health is but the appli- 

 cation of plain physiological laws, it is no less true that the art 

 of restoring the health, curative as distinct from preventive 

 medicine, rests upon the same basis. In former days the 

 physician was one who recognised what he called the disease of 

 his patient, who referred to his books of precedents as a lawyer 

 to his statutes, and who prescribed a proper remedy to cast out 



'I need only refer to the fruitful labours of Mr. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert 

 in this direction. 



the disease. We now know that disease is, as the name implies, 

 a'purely subjective conception. The disease of a host is the 

 health of the parasite, and we cure a human sufferer by poisoning 

 the animals or plants which interfere with his comfort. The 

 same changes which in the old man are the natural steps of 

 decay, the absence of which after a certain age would be 

 truly pathological, are the cause of acute disease in the young. 

 Pathology has no laws distinct from those of physiology. 



When these now obvious considerations are thoroughly under- 

 stood, it clearly follows that all "systems of medicine" are in 

 their very nature condemned. All that the art of medicine can 

 do is to apply a knowledge of natural laws, of mechanics, and 

 of hydrostatics, of botany and zoology, of cliemistry and 

 electricity, of the behaviour of living cells and organs when 

 subjected to the influence of heat and of cold, of acids and 

 alkalies, of alcohols and ethers, of narcotics and stimulants, so 

 as to modify certain deviations from ordinary structure and 

 function which are productive of pain, or discomfort, or death. 

 It is, therefore, plain that rational medicine, or keeping right 

 and setting right the human body, must rest upon a know ledge 

 of its structure and its actions, just as a steam-engine or a watch 

 cannot he mended upon general principles, but only by one who 

 is familiar with their construction and working, and who can 

 detect the source of their irregularity. 



An objector may say: — "Admitting that medicine is an art, 

 it is a purely empirical art. You cannot detect the origin of 

 many of -the maladies which you are yet able to cure ; your best 

 remedies have not been obtained by scientific experiment, but by 

 chance, observation, and accumulated experience ; and if you 

 doctors would give more time to practical therapeutics, that is, 

 to finding out w hat is good for the several aches and pains we 

 complain of, you would spend 3 our time better than in abstrase 

 researches into microscopic anatomy or the properties of a dead, 

 frog's muscle." 



The answer to the objection is an appeal to fact. For cen- 

 turies so called observation and experience left medicine in the 

 condition it occupied at the end of the seventeenth century. The 

 progress of therapeutics is to be marked, not by the labours of . 

 "practical men," (who, by the way, are of all the most theoreti- 

 cal, only that their theories are wrong), but by the, at first sight, 

 unconnected studies of |Descartes and Newton, of Ilooke and 

 Grew, of Lavoisier and Davy and Volta, of Marshall Hall and 

 Johannes Miiller. 



The history of science proves that unconnected, unsystematic, 

 inaccurate observations are worth nothing. For untold ages 

 men have had ample opportunities of studying the indications of 

 the weather, and have felt the utmost desire to obtain a know- 

 ledge _of what they portend. Yet it may fairly be said that 

 nothing had been done to the purpose, until combined and 

 systematic observations were made in this country and America. 

 The fact is, that popular notions do not rest upon experience or 

 observation. They rest, with scarcely an exception, upon 

 metaphysical theories. In dealing with uneducated persons, 

 both of the lower and higher ranks, physicians find abundance of 

 theories as to the nature and the origin of disease, and of 

 suggestions as to its cure. The only thing which would be of 

 value is what we can scarcely ever get, an accurate observation 

 of what they see and feel. Every fallacy of popular medicine, 

 every solemn medical imposture, is tlie ghost of some long 

 defunct doctrine of the schools. Therefore it is that common 

 experience is almost absolutely useless in practical arts. They, 

 without exception, depend for their progress upon the advance 

 of science, that is, upon methodical, continuous, and scrupulously 

 accurate observations and experiments. 



Many important advances in the practice of medicine have 

 been gained by direct and intentional experiments instituted with 

 a therapeutical object. Such was the Ilunterian operation for 

 aneurism, the process of skin-grafting, and subperiosteal opera- 

 tions ; such was the administration of chloroform and the intro- 

 duction of nitrite of amyl, chloral hydrate, and carbolic acid. 

 Such direct experiments still go on, and among them deserve 

 mention for the skill and the untiring patience with which they 

 were carried out, those investigations upon the action of various 

 drugs on the secretion of bile for which we are indebted to 

 Prof. Rutherford and his coadjutors. Even apparently acci- 

 dental discoveries were not made accidentally. Hundreds of 

 country surgeons must have been familiar with the cow-pox, and 

 have seen examples of the immunity it conferred from the more 

 terrible variola, but he who discovered vaccination was no 

 falsely called practical man. He was a man of science, the 



