76 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



as " mountain sickness." As adaptation proceeded, 

 the blueness of the lips, nausea, and headache completely 

 disappeared, and it was then found that even during 

 rest the lung epithelium had begun to secrete oxygen 

 actively inwards. The kidneys and liver were now also 

 regulating to a lower degree of alkalinity in the blood, 

 so that the alveolar C0 2 pressure was diminished, and 

 the breathing consequently increased, thus raising the 

 oxygen-supply to the lungs. There was also a marked 

 increase in the haemoglobin percentage and in the blood 

 volume. The organism had so adapted itself as nearly 

 to compensate for the deficiency in oxygen-supply, just 

 as a heart gradually compensates for a permanent 

 valvular defect. 



The normals of a living organism are no mere accidents 

 of physical structure. They persist and endure, and they 

 are just the expression of what the organism is. By 

 investigation we find out what they are, and how they 

 are related to one another ; and the ground axiom of 

 biology is that they hang together and actively persist 

 as a whole, whether they are normals of structure, 

 activity, environment, or life-history. In other words, 

 organisms are just organisms, and life is just life, as it 

 has always seemed to the ordinary man to be. Life as 

 such is a reality. Physiology is therefore a biological 

 science, and the only possible physiology is biological 

 physiology. The new physiology is biological physi- 

 ology — not bio-physics or bio-chemistry. The attempt 

 to analyse living organisms into physical and chemical 

 mechanism is probably the most colossal failure in the 

 whole history of modern science. It is a failure, not, 

 as its present defenders suggest, because the facts we 



