PHYSIOLOGY 



fluid did not leak out of the blood-vessels so readily, 

 more time was given for new blood-corpuscles to 

 be formed, and so thousands of lives were saved. 



Coming now to some of the present problems 

 which have been exercising our minds, I should 

 like to preface what I have to say about them by 

 a reminiscence of my own. In 1888, thirty-three 

 years ago, I was a comparatively young man, and 

 I attended almost my first meeting of the British 

 Association, and, being a youngster, I listened 

 with becoming reverence to the words of my 

 elders. The President in that particular year was 

 the great engineer Sir Frederick Bramwell, and, 

 though it is so long ago, I remember, almost as 

 well as if it had been yesterday, the way in which 

 he began his address. He said I am going to 

 shorten his remarks " I once spent a pleasant 

 evening listening to the late Lord Iddesleigh, who 

 delighted an entire audience by speaking upon 

 the very important question of * Nothing/ Sir 

 Frederick said : " I do not intend to imitate that 

 feat, but I want to speak to you to-night of ' Next 

 to nothing.' By that he meant those little 

 details, at first sight apparently of trivial import, 

 but which after all are of vital importance, and 

 he showed, with many illustrations, how crude 

 machinery had been converted into useful mech- 

 anisms by attention to small, trivial, ' next-to- 

 nothing ' details. He took his examples from 



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