BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1225 



seems as if there were some physiological peculiarity which affects 

 the animal as a whole. But the greatest of its peculiarities is perhaps 

 that we do not know on what its peculiarities depend; and such a 

 case must surely be very interesting to students of medicine! 



Perhaps we have said enough to show why it is urgent to tighten 

 and strengthen — and multiply — the links between natural history 

 and medicine. Yet we must not forget the influence of health or 

 disease on the personality as a whole. 



Thus the brevity of Darwin's working-hours, as of other eminent 

 men of letters also, and the dyspeptic and other miseries of so 

 many prolonged workers like Carlyle, and even Huxley, are very 

 probably to be in part explained as indirect consequences of eye- 

 strain; and De Ouincey's over-indulgence in laudanum has been 

 ascribed to his finding it thus helpful, without knowing that an 

 oculist might similarly have helped and yet restrained him. And 

 so on for various other limitations or excesses of genius; a better 

 theory at least than Nordau's, of their mental degeneration. So too 

 the fevering of malaria has been offered as medically extenuating 

 the moral excesses of too many Caesars and other despots; much 

 as its weakening results explain the submissiveness which too 

 tamely tolerated these. 



The victory at Waterloo — as a no less irreproachably patriotic 

 historian than Field-Marshal Sir Garnet Wolseley has pointed out — 

 was not a little aided by Napoleon being so long out of action in 

 agony during a critical period of the battle; and a recent German 

 medical writer has insisted on the arterio-sclerosis of Von Kluck, 

 and of other of his leading generals too, as a noteworthy element 

 in his defeat upon the Mame; since for these a real disability in 

 conflict with the healthier and quicker- witted leaders on the French 

 side. Here, in short, is a fresh and fertile line for medically minded 

 historians and biographers; and we cannot but agree that it works 

 well the other way also ; for must we not bear in mind the magnificent 

 all-round health of Goethe in discussing his varied and long con- 

 tinued life-achievement ? 



NATURAL SCIENCE AND MEDICINE 



It is a now very old and thoroughly familiar story, manifest in 

 every history of medicine, every retrospect of botany and zoology, 

 as well as of physiological and morphological inquiry, that these 

 have often and notably interacted; and particularly from the 

 medical side. And this not merely because the most devoted of 

 naturalists have till lately had little or no other means of earning 

 a living, and this even in travel, or in medical schools, but also 

 because the needs of action are ever stimulant to thought and 



