m MEDICAL SCIENCE. 31 



uncertainties concerning the meclianism of the special 

 functions. Up to the time of the hving generation of 

 observers, Nature had kept over all her inner work- 

 shops the forbidding inscription, No Admittance/ If 

 any prying observer ventured to spy through his mag- 

 nifying tubes into the mysteries of her glands and 

 canals and fluids, she covered up her work in blinding 

 mists and bewildering halos, as the deities of old con- 

 cealed their favored heroes in the moment of danger. 

 Science has at length sifted the turbid light of her 

 lenses, and blanched their delusive rainbows. 



Anatomy studies the organism in space. Physiol- 

 ogy studies it also in time. After the study of form 

 and composition follows close that of action, and this 

 leads us along back to the first moment of the germ, 

 and forward to the resolution of the living frame into 

 its lifeless elements. In this way Anatomy, or rather 

 that branch of it which we call Histolog}^ has become 

 inseparably blended with the study of function. The 

 connection between the science of hfe and that of in- 

 timate structure on the one hand, and composition on 

 the other, is illustrated in the titles of two recent works 

 of remarkable excellence, — the Physiological Anato- 

 my of Todd and Bowman, and the Physiological 

 Chemistry of Lehmann. 



Let me briefly recapitulate a few of our acquisitions 

 in Physiology, due in large measure to our new instru- 

 ments and methods of research, and at the same time 

 indicate the limits which form the permanent or the 



