September 2, 1897] 



NATURE 



435 



possible that the association centres, with the intermediate 

 association fibres which connect them with the sensory and 

 motor centres, may be the mechanism through which man is 

 enabled to control his animal instincts, so far as they are 

 dependent on motion and sensation. 



The higher we ascend in the scale of humanity, the more 

 perfect does this control become, and the more do the instincts, 

 emotions, passions and appetites become subordinated to the 

 self-conscious principle which regulates our judgments and be- 

 liefs. It will therefore now be a matter for scientific inquiry 

 to determine, as far as the anatomical conditions will permit, 

 the proportion which the association centres bear to the other 

 . cntres both in mammals and in man, the period of development 

 f the association fibres, in comparison with that of the motor 

 md sensory fibres in different animals, and, if possible, to ob- 

 tain a comparison in these respects between the brains of savages 

 and those of men of a high order of intelligence. 



The capability of erecting the trunk ; the power of extending 

 and fixing the hip and knee joints when standing ; the stability 

 of the foot ; the range and variety of movement of the joints 

 of the upper limb ; the balancing of the head on the summit 

 of the spine ; the mass and weight of the brain, and the per- 

 fection of its internal mechanism, are distinctly human 

 characters. They are the factors concerned in adapting the 

 body of man, under the guidance of reason, intelligence, the 

 sense of responsibility and power of self-control, for the dis- 

 charge of varied and important duties in relation to himself, 

 his Maker, his fellows, the animal world and the earth on 

 which he lives. 



S E C T I O xM I. 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Prof. Michael Foster, M.A., M.D., 

 D.C.L., LL.D., Sec.R.S., President of the Section. 

 We who have come from the little island on the other side of 

 the great waters to take part in this important gathering of the 

 British Association, have of late been much exercised in retro- 

 spection. We have been looking back on the sixty years reign 

 of our beloved Sovereign, and dwelling on what has happened 

 during her gracious rule. We have, perhaps, done little in 

 calling to mind the wrongs, the mistakes and the failures of the 

 Victorian era ; but our minds and our mouths have been full of 

 its achievements and its progress ; and each of us, of himself or 

 through another, has been busy in bringing back to the present 

 the events of more than half a century of the past. It was while 

 I, with others, was in this retrospective mood that the duty of 

 preparing some few words to say to you to-day seemed suddenly 

 to change from an impalpable cloud in the far distance to a 

 heavy burden pressing directly on the back ; and in choosing 

 something to say I have succumbed to the dominant influence. 

 Before putting pen to paper, however, I recovered sufficiently to 

 resist the temptation to add one more to the many reviews which 

 have appeared of the progress of physiology during the Victorian 

 era. ' I also rejected the idea of doing that for which I find 

 precedents in past presidential addresses — namely, of attempting 

 to tell what has been the history of the science to which a 

 Section is devoted during the brief interval which has elapsed 

 since the Section last met ; to try and catch physiology, or any 

 other science, as it rushes through the brief period of some 

 twelve months seemed to me not unlike photographing the flying 

 bullet without adequate apparatus ; the result could only be 

 either a blurred or a delusive image. But I bethought me that 

 this is not the first, we hope it will not be the last, time that the 

 British Association has met in the Western Hemisphere ; and 

 though the events of the thirteen years which have slipped by 

 since the meeting at Montreal in 1884 might seem to furnish a 

 very slender oat on which to pipe a presidential address, I have 

 hoped that I might be led to sound upon it some few notes which 

 might be listened to. 



And indeed, though perhaps when we come to look into it 

 closely almost every period would seem to have a value of its 

 own, the past thirteen years do, in a certain sense, mark a break 

 between the physiology of the past and that of the future. 

 When the Association met at Montreal in 1884, Darwin, whose 

 pregnant ideas have swayed physiology in the limited sense of 

 that word, as well as that broader study of living beings which 

 we sometimes call biology, as indeed they have every branch 

 of natural knowledge, had been taken from us only some two 



NO. 1453. VOL. 56] 



years before, and there were still alive most of the men who did 

 the great works of physiology of the middle and latter half of 

 this century. The gifted Claude Bernard had pa.ssed away 

 some years before, but his peers might have been present at 

 Montreal. Bowman, whose classic works on muscle and kidney 

 stand out as peaks in the physiological landscape of the past, 

 models of researches finished and complete so far as the 

 opportunities of the time would allow, fruitful beginnings and 

 admirable guides for the labours of others. Brown-Sequard, 

 who shares with Bernard the glory of having opened up the 

 great modern path of the influence of the nervous system on 

 vascular and thus on nutritional events, and who, if he made 

 some mistakes, did many things which will last for all time. 

 Briicke, whose clear judgment, as shown in his digestive and 

 other work, gave permanent value to whatever he put forth. 

 Du Bois Reymond, who, if he laboured in a narrow path, set a 

 brilliant example of the way in which exact physical analysis 

 may be applied to the phenomena of living beings, and in other 

 ways had a powerful influence on the progress of physiology. 

 Bonders, whose mind seemed to have caught something of the 

 better qualities of the physiological organ to which his pro- 

 fessional life was devoted, and our knowledge of which he so 

 largely extended, so sharply did he focus his mental eye on 

 every physiological problem to which he turned — and these 

 were many and varied. Helmholtz, whose great works on 

 vision and hearing, to say nothing of his earlier distinctly 

 physiological researches, make us feel that if physics gained 

 much, physiology lost even more when the physiologist turned 

 aside to more distinctly physical inquiries. Lastly, and not 

 least, Ludwig, who by his own hands or through his pupils did 

 so much to make physiology the exact science which it is 

 to-day, but which it was not when he began his work. I say 

 lastly, but I might add the name of one who, though barred by 

 circumstances from contributing much directly to physiology by 

 way of research, so used his powerful influence in many ways in 

 aid of physiological interests as to have helped the science 

 onward to no mean extent, at least among English-speaking 

 people — I mean Huxley. All these might have met at 

 Montreal. They have all left us now. Among the peers of 

 the men I have mentioned whose chief labours were carried on 

 in the forties, the fifties and the sixties of the century, one 

 prominent inquirer alone seems to be left, Albert von KoUiker, 

 who in his old age is doing work of which even he in his youth 

 might have been proud. The thirteen years which have swept 

 the others away seem to mark a gulf between the physiological 

 world of to-day and that of the time in which most of their 

 work was done. 



They are gone, but they have left behind their work and their 

 names. May they of the future, as I believe we of the present 

 are doing, take up their work and their example, doing work 

 other than theirs but after their pattern, following in their steps. 

 In the thirteen years during which these have passed away 

 physiology has not been idle. Indeed, the more we look into 

 the period the more it seems to contain. 



The study of physiology, as of other sciences, though it may 

 be stimulated by difficulties (and physiology has the stimulus of 

 a special form of opposition unknown to other sciences), expands 

 under the sunshine of opportunity and aid. And it may be 

 worth while to compare the opportunities for study of physiology 

 in 1884 with those in 1897. At this meeting of the British 

 Association I may fitly confine myself, I was going to say, to 

 British matters ; but I feel at this point, as others have felt, the 

 want of a suitable nomenclature. We who are gathered here 

 to-day have, with the exception of a few honoured guests from 

 the Eastern Hemisphere, one common bond, one common token 

 of unity, and, so far as I know, one only ; I am speaking now 

 of outward tokens ; down deeper in our nature there are, I trust, 

 yet others. We all speak the English tongue. Some of us belong 

 to what is called Great Britain and Ireland, others to that which 

 is sometimes spoken of as Greater Britain. But there are others 

 here who belong to neither ; though English in tongue, they are in 

 no sense British. To myself, to whom the being English in speech 

 is a fact of far deeper moment than any political boundary, and 

 who wish at the present moment to deal with the study of 

 physiology among all those who speak the English tongue, there 

 comes the great want of some word which will denote all such. 

 I hope, indeed I think, that others feel the same want too. 

 The term Anglo-Saxon is at once pedantic and incorrect, and 

 yet there is none other ; and, in the absence of such a better 

 term, I shall be forgiven if I venture at times to use the 



