IV. 



THE RELATION OF PHYSIOLOGY TO MEDICINE. 1 



In spite of the great and striking development of physi- 

 ology, and of the teaching of it, particularly on the 

 practical side, there is a considerable, and in some respects 

 growing, want of contact between physiology and prac- 

 tical medicine and surgery. As Professor Frederic Lee 

 of Columbia University put it in a recent paper (Journ. 

 Amer. Med. Assoc, vol. lxvi. p. 640) : " During their 

 first or second year, or in both, the students receive 

 their instruction in physiology. Most of them follow 

 the course willingly because they have faith in the 

 wisdom of the men who have planned the course, and 

 faith that in some way not now clearly comprehended 

 their training in it will be useful to them later. Never- 

 theless, too many students question the good judgment 

 that imposes on them a difficult topic, the relation of 

 which to the treatment of sick persons they do not under- 

 stand. By the end of their second year they have com- 

 pleted their work in physiology, and lay the subject 

 aside with a feeling of relief as they turn to the more 

 congenial occupations of their two clinical years. Now 

 they acquire a new vocabulary for which all along they 



1 Paper read at a meeting of the Edinburgh Pathological Club, 

 January 1918. 



81 <; 



