196 BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS 



before a proper understanding of the power and manner 

 of employment of the new has to be met. The historical 

 evolution of the groundwork of science generally, as well 

 as of physiology in particular, has been slow and, to some 

 extent, fitful and halting, but it has been wonderfully 

 consistent and conservative, so that we may believe that 

 any studied effort to amend and expedite progress here 

 will be followed by the supply of a " felt want " and that 

 it will maintain the continuity of the evolution of the 

 terminology, and phraseology of a subject which lies at 

 the very foundation of a department of physiological 

 knowledge, which, itself, is now so extensive as to 

 underlie much of the adjoining special sciences of 

 anatomy and pathology, and to pervade the texture of 

 the general subject of biology, which may be said to 

 include the whole of animated nature. 



While thus calling attention to the necessity of amend- 

 ing the manner of use of the terms secretion and 

 excretion, we forbear offering, in the meantime, any 

 suggestion as to their modification, substitution, or 

 abrogation, having personally a great veneration for 

 them, begotten of the great services they have fulfilled 

 in our everyday life and work, and our appreciation 

 of the difficulties involved in "changing the fashion," 

 and clothing anew " subjects of thought " which have 

 passed current during the great advances characterising 

 the recent progress of physiological, pathological, and 

 chemical knowledge, and experience. 



Bound up with the terms secretion and excretion 



is a clue to the origin and derivation of the earliest 



. 

 periods of their growth and evolution leading back 



to a period when the vernacular tongue was more in 

 use, in the expression of scientific facts, and the appli- 

 cation of a knowledge of those facts to the everyday 

 requirements of mankind. From which we feel warranted 

 in concluding that that clue is made up of a compound 

 thread emanating from both sacred and secular sources, 

 the skeins of which have been gradually lost, as the 

 divorce between religion and science took place, and 

 the thread, at last, " made up " of the solitary fibre of 

 science. In this divorce, the " secret," of the rapid 



