4IO 



NATURE 



{Augttst 28, 1879 



friend of Hunter and of Cavendish, an anatomist and natural 

 philosopher. The fruits of Jenner's discovery are spread over 

 the whole earth. This humble village doctor has saved more 

 lives than the most glorious conqueror destroyed, but his name 

 is little honoured, and the only monument to his memory has been 

 banished from association with vulgar kings and skilful homicides 

 to an obscure corner of the great city, where his only homage 

 is the health and beauty of the children who play around his 

 statue. 



But after all, it is not so much by direct and immediate con- 

 tributions to the art of healing that physiology has vindicated 

 her ancient title of the institutes of medicine, numerous and 

 impartant as these contributions have been. It is still more by 

 the scientific spirit which has transformed the empty learning so 

 justly ridiculed by Moliere and Le Sage into the practical 

 efficiency of modern surgery. Let me give an instance of what 

 I mean. The notion of measuring the temperature of the body 

 is simple enough, and the rough observation that in inflammation 

 the temperature is raised had led to the various terms by which 

 it was denoted in ancient medicine, and to numberless theories 

 now happily forgotten. But although the thermometer was well 

 known, and had been applied by many scientific physicians, 

 notably by De Haen, by Dr. John Davy, and by Sir Benjamin 

 Brodie, yet the practical value of the clinical thermometer which 

 now every practitioner carries in his pocket was not understood 

 until the other day. - Those only who had been trained in accurate 

 physical and physiological investigations, who had learned the 

 worse than uselessness of " rough observation," were able to see 

 the enormous importance of clinical thermometry. This most 

 practical of modern improvements in medicine would never have 

 been dreamt of by "practical men " : we owe it to the scientific 

 training of German laboratories. 



If physiology is of such great national importance, if the 

 necessity of experimental research is so vital to the common 

 national wealth, to agriculture and commerce, to health and 

 well-being, ought not its well-ascertained results to be taught 

 in our common schools, and its prosecution directly encouraged 

 by the State ? 



There is no question of the great importance of children being 

 taught the rudimentary laws of health, the bodily evils of dirt and 

 sloth and vice, the excellence of temjierance, the danger of the 

 first inroads of disease. Such teaching, now broadcast in many 

 excellent manuals as "The Personal Care of Health," by the late 

 Dr. Parkes, and Dr. Bridges' " Catechism of Health," is no doubt 

 extremely valuable, and happily is daily more and more diffused. 

 But when beyond the direct utility of such knowledge, we attempt 

 to make it an intellectual discipline, there are, I conceive, diffi- 

 culties which w'ill always prevent even elementary physiology 

 from forming an important part of general education. First, 

 there is the practical difficulty of the necessary dissections, next 

 the impossibility of making physiology demonstrative, and thirdly, 

 the abstruseness of the subject. It is impossible to have even an 

 ■elementary knowledge of the laws of living beings without a very 

 considerable familiarity with those of physics and of chemistry, 

 and even in medical schools it requires all our efforts to prevent 

 it degenerating into a mere dogmatic statement of results, or a 

 laboured repetition of hearsay statements. As an intellectual 

 discipline, for facility of demonstration, for the simplicity of the 

 objects, their beauty and interest, their associations with the 

 green lanes and broad moors of England, with the poetry of 

 Cymbcline and Lycidas, with fairy tales and local -folk-lore — 

 Botany is to my mind the branch of natural science which is 

 above all others to be chosen where one only can be taught. 

 Next in importance I would place elementary physics, the know- 

 ledge of the simplest laws of masses at rest and in motion, of 

 heat and light. Its great recommendations are its precision, its 

 constant and useful illustrations in daily life, the interest it gives 

 to the handicrafts and manufactures in which so large a number 

 of English boys and girls are busied, and the necessity of such 

 knowledge as the first step in acquiring all other natural 

 sciences. 



First, then, I would that every Sheffield girl should love 

 flowers with the deep ani abiding affi^ction of familiar know- 

 ledge, and that every Sheffield lad should know every common 

 plant in your beautiful woods and find his purest pleasure on the 

 heights of Bell Hagg and the broad expanse of Stanage Moor. 

 And next I would that your workmen and workboys should 

 know so much of mechanics that they may take an intelligent 

 pride in your vast factories, and th^t in some of them may be 



awakened the genius to which we trust to repeat in future 

 generations the national services of Arkwright, and Watt, and 

 Stevenson. 



With regard to the endowment of research in biology, I must 

 confess that I should be sorry to seeit undertaken by government 

 funds. That such investigations are of public interest, that they 

 are difficult and expensive, and that at present they languish for 

 want of adequate support, is all true. But this country is not so 

 poor, nor our countrymen so wanting in public spirit, that we 

 need appeal to the national purse to supply every ascertained 

 want. Great as is the national importance of science, the nation 

 is more important still ; and even if that were the alternative, I 

 would rather that we should indefinitely continue dependent on 

 Germany for our knowledge than give up the local energy, the 

 unofficial zeal which has made England what she is. Far better 

 for the strength and the civilisation of the nation that a thousand 

 pounds were raised every year for the endowment of unremunera- 

 tive researches in this wealthy town of Sheffield than that ten 

 thousand were paid you by a paternal monarch or an enlightened 

 department. 



But surely there is no need for us to go to Parliament for such 

 sums as we require. In the first place, scientific men themselves 

 show a good example of not asking before they give. There is 

 the modest sum which we raise in this Association, there are the 

 funds for helping research of the Royal Society, the Chemi- 

 cal Society, the British Medical Association, the Iron and Steel 

 Institute, the Whitworth Scholarships. Next we have the re- 

 sources of our Universities, which have scarcely begun to apply 

 themselves to the task. I need do no more than allude to the 

 Cavendish Laboratory, or to the Physiological School at Cam- 

 bridge, where a simple college tutor, of rare ability, and of 

 still more rare sympathy and energy, has in ten years, a.;hieved 

 results which we need not shrink from comparing witli those of 

 the great continental laboratories. The magnificent Museum of 

 Anatomy, maintained by the College of Surgeons almost entirely 

 out of their own funds, is another instance of private care for 

 science to which we find no parallel abroad ; and the Zoological 

 Society wisely spends a large part of its income in prosecuting 

 comparative anatomy, and in publishing its beautifully illustrated 

 memoirs. 



But besides the effiorts of scientific bodies and the wealth of our 

 national Universities, we may surely look to the public spirit of 

 ancient companies and corporations to do something for the 

 cause of science. In the middle ages our country was covered 

 with parish churches by private munificence ; in the sixteenth 

 century most of our public and grammar schools were endowed ; 

 in later times our great religious and charitable societies were 

 founded. May we not hope that, before the close of the present 

 century, the discriminating knowledge which alone prevents gifts 

 of money from being a curse instead of a blessing to a community, 

 may lead to the establishment of libraries, and museums, and 

 laboratories by universities and towns, which shall bear com- 

 parison, I will not say with those of Paris, or Leipsic, or Bonn, 

 but with the poorer but scarcely less distinguished sdiools of 

 Heidelberg and Gottingen, of Wiirzburg and of Utrecht ? 



Where we have institutions already under government con- 

 trol and patronage, let them be maintained as efficiently ani 

 liberally as possible. The British Museum, and its library, 

 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the Royal Gardens at 

 Kevv (happily preserved for the present from the short-sighted 

 eagerness of those who would destroy their scientific value), 

 these are great national institutions of which we are justly proud. 

 Successive Governments will have enough to do to maintain their 

 efficiency and to guard them from incompetent interference. 



Whatever may be thought of the duty of the State directly to 

 encourage the pursuit of animal and vegetable physiology, one 

 would have supposed that at least what diplomatists call a be- 

 nevolent neutr.ility, would be shown to a pursuit so labourious 

 and costly, which demands trained workmen and the devotion of 

 a lifetime, which is so important for the national wealth and 

 health, and which, by reason, by experience, and by testimony, 

 we know to be the only guarantee for advance in the various 

 branches of the healing art. Why is it then that institutions 

 which owe nothing to government assistance, and men who 

 spend their time and talents in self-denying and unremunerative 

 service for the public good, are not suffered to pursue their bene- 

 ficent work in peace ? 



You know that certain persons who profess to be shocked by 

 the methods of physiological research have succeeded in placing 



