SECTION K PHYSIOLOGY 



(Hall 4, September 23, 10 a. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: DR. S. J. METZER, New York. 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR MAX VERWORN, University of Gottingen. 



PROFESSOR WILLIAM H. HOWELL, Johns Hopkins University. 

 SECRETARY: DR. REID HUNT, Washington. 



THE Chairman of the Section of Physiology was Dr. S. J. Met- 

 zer, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York City, who took for his 

 introductory topic : 



THE DOMAIN OF PHYSIOLOGY AND ITS RELATION 



TO MEDICINE 



PHYSIOLOGY is of medical parentage, was reared by medical men, 

 and is still housed and fed by medical faculties. Yet it is medicine 

 against which its frequent declaration of independence is directed. 

 Medicine is a practical science, and is too inexact, and physiology 

 wishes to be a pure, exact science. It, therefore, tries to keep aloof from 

 medicine, and manifests a longing for association with, or, still better, 

 for a reduction to, physics and chemistry. It urges, furthermore, 

 that the affiliation with medicine binds physiology down to only one 

 species of animal with intricate, complicated conditions, while it would 

 be more beneficial to physiology if it would direct its energies toward 

 a study of monocellular organisms where the conditions are so simple. 



Permit me to discuss briefly the domain of physiology and the im- 

 portance of its relations to medicine as they present themselves to 

 my mind. There can be no doubt whatsoever that physiology has a 

 perfectly legitimate object entirely of its own. Perhaps I may elucidate 

 this statement in the following crude way. All natural phenomena 

 impress us in two ways , as matter and as force. The phenomena are 

 either inanimate or animate. The studies of inanimate matter are to 

 be found in mineralogy, crystallography in a part of chemistry, etc. 

 The studies of the forces or energies of inanimate phenomena are 

 carried on by physics and physical chemistry. In the fields of living 

 phenomena, matter is studied by gross and minute anatomy and by 

 descriptive zoology and botany, or, in short, by morphologyy. The 

 studies of the forces, the energies, or the functions of living matter 

 are the proper domain of physiology. Now this definition permits 

 a few deductions. All these four divisions are bound, as sciences, to 



