326 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



reciprocal reactions of single individuals living together as a social 

 whole, and also of the way in which they react to the influence 

 of external environment, etc. Its province would therefore be 

 more especially the study of the functions of the central nervous 

 system. Zeliony lays special stress on the importance to socio- 

 logical physiology of Pavlov's conditioned reflex actions. 



Whilst, however, we admit that the study of the nervous 

 functions in social aggregates should take the prominent place 

 accorded to it in the study of the physiology of the individual 

 organism, we cannot lose sight of the fact that social physiology 

 should rest upon a broader basis, and include all the problems of 

 individual physiology which we have already considered, whilst 

 laying no claim to be alone capable of affording a final and 

 satisfactory solution of these problems. Social problems are of 

 such a complex nature that many and various sciences must join 

 forces and co-operate in the endeavour to solve them. No one, 

 however, will venture to deny that considerable assistance may be 

 expected from the application of physiology to the study of 

 anthropological, ethnological, and social phenomena. 



Giuseppe Sergi (1910), the pioneer of anthropological science 

 in Italy, recognises that anthropology has as yet only reached an 

 elementary stage, and rightly asks that its progress may be assured 

 by the application to it of the methods of natural science, whether 

 of zoology or of botany. We are indeed aware that the anthro- 

 pological results so far attained by the numerous workers in this 

 field are very poor, as compared with those reached in the other 

 natural sciences. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the 

 methods of observation hitherto employed in anthropology, such 

 as craniology or craniometry, the study of the various more 

 superficial characteristics of the human body, of the manners, 

 customs, and civilisation of different peoples, etc., are lacking in 

 the precision of the other sciences, physiology amongst them, 

 which aspire to rank as exact natural sciences. 



In like manner physiology, as the science of individual functions, 

 obtains data and information of great assistance in the solution of 

 its problems from the observations of pure anthropology and 

 ethnology. Knowledge of the kinds of food consumed by different 

 peoples, for example, has done much to further the solution of the 

 problem of nutrition. Individual psychology may derive even 

 greater profit from knowledge of the customs, beliefs, ideas, and 

 opinions of different races. We shall of course confine ourselves 

 in this chapter to those data which are more or less closely related 

 to physiology. They are neither numerous nor of the first 

 importance to physiology, since we are indebted for most of them 

 not to medical men or biologists, but to travellers and explorers, 

 of whom even the most competent, though undoubtedly expert 

 anthropologists or ethnologists, were not qualified to make those 



