FOUNDATIONS 15 



Medicine a Branch of Biology. Members of the medical 

 profession have direct access to a wide field of biological 

 experience and material from which the academic biologist 

 is debarred. Our daily study of our patients is a biological 

 occupation. Each advance a doctor makes in skill is a 

 biological achievement. If such advance is a discovery new 

 to his science, and is published, it is a contribution to the 

 humane applied biology we call Medicine. " Pathology is 

 by no means the smallest branch of that beautiful science 

 biology," Virchow wrote in 1855. 



To have in the foundations of our consciousness the 

 well-established principles of general biology is necessary to 

 every medical practitioner. But principles cease to guide 

 if they are not revived from time to time by personal experi- 

 ence ; to spend an occasional hour or two watching with the 

 aid of a microscope living algae, fungi, Mycetozoa, etc., 

 brings real refreshment. In order to be able to share any 

 new knowledge we may gain in matters that pertain to 

 general biology we must use terms that cannot be misunder- 

 stood ; for this purpose we must learn the rules of technical 

 biological conversation, and by so doing we shall obtain for 

 ourselves the key to the treasures stored in systematic 

 biological literature. The responsibility of instructing the 

 rest of the community on the subject of disease must be 

 ours. Ours also is the duty of investigation ; lay biologists 

 have voluntarily come to our aid from time to time ; and 

 too often from being untrained to know or to counter the 



