THE RELATION OF PHYSIOLOGY TO OTHER SCIENCES 



BY MAX VERWORN 

 (Translated from the German by Dr. Thomas Stotesbury Githens, Philadelphia') 



[Max Verworn, Professor of Physiology and Director of the Physiological Institute, 

 University of Gottingen, since 1901. b. Berlin, Germany, November 4, 1863. 

 Ph.D. Berlin, 1887; M.D. Jena, 1889. Assistant Instructor and Privat-docent 

 in Physiology, University of Jena, 1891; Professor Extraordinary, ibid. 1895. 

 Author of Psycho-physiologische Protisten Studien; Allgemeine Physiologic; and 

 numerous other works and memoirs.] 



WHAT is physiology? Ask any educated person, who does not 

 belong to the narrow circle of naturalists and physicians, concern- 

 ing physics and chemistry, concerning botany and zoology, con- 

 cerning anatomy and pathology, even concerning psychology, and 

 you will receive an intelligent answer. Ask him, however, con- 

 cerning physiology, and he is generally unable to give any inform- 

 ation. It is the peculiar fate of physiology that it is the least 

 known of all the great branches of natural science, even among 

 the educated classes. 



I have often asked myself why this should be. Why do the 

 educated classes lack a clear conception of physiology? We may 

 here think of several reasons. To me, however, it appears that 

 one cause is of especial importance, that is, the one-sided limitation 

 of physiology to its own special problems. 



For a long time the great general questions have been neglected 

 by physiology, the questions which interest the masses. Hardly 

 another branch of biology requires specialism as much as physi- 

 ology, which, in each of its different branches, requires such various 

 and manifold preparatory education that the individual investi- 

 gator must generally limit his work to a single branch in order 

 to make any advance in the short span of his life. This is why 

 the work of physiologists is not understood among the masses. 

 Its connection with the great problems is generally not clear to 

 them. 



This one-sided immersion in special problems has even led to 

 an isolation of physiology among those sciences which originally 

 stood nearest to it. Physiology was, at one time, closely amalga- 

 mated with anatomy and pathology, with zoology and botany, 

 with physics and philosophy. Even since the scientific renaissance 

 of the sixteenth century, physiology stood in the closest connec- 

 tion with all these branches until far into the nineteenth. For a 

 century, however, this connection has become looser and looser, 

 and toward the end of the preceding century physiology was al- 



