354: THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 



mal biology, was swiftly followed by a " cellular pathol- 

 ogy," as its logical counterpart. I need not remind 

 you how great an instrument of investigation this doc- 

 trine has proved in the hands of the man of genius 

 to whom its development is due, and who would prob- 

 ably be the last to forget that abnormal conditions of 

 the co-ordinative and distributive machinery of the body 

 are no less important factors of disease. 



Henceforward, as it appears to me, the connection 

 of medicine with the biological sciences is clearly de- 

 fined. Pure pathology is that branch of biology which 

 defines the particular perturbation of cell-life, or of the 

 co-ordinating machinery, or of both, on which the 

 phenomena of disease depend. 



Those who are conversant with the present state of 

 biology will hardly hesitate to admit that the concep- 

 tion of the life of one of the higher animals as the sum- 

 mation of the lives of a cell aggregate, brought into 

 harmonious action by a co-ordinative machinery formed 

 by some of these cells, constitutes a permanent acqui- 

 sition of physiological science. But the last form of 

 the battle between the animistic and the physical views 

 of life is seen in the contention whether the physical 

 analysis of vital phenomena can be carried beyond this 

 point or not. 



There are some to whom living protoplasm is a sub- 

 stance, even such as Harvey conceived the blood to be, 

 " summd cum providentia et inteliectu in finem certum 

 agens, quasi ratiocinio quodam ; " and who look with 



