XL. 



ADDEESS ON PHYSIOLOGY IN EELATION TO 

 MEDICINE IN MODERN TIMES, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, 

 AT OXFORD. 



The fact that my connection with the University of Oxford has 

 put me into the honourable office of giving this address will, I hope, 

 justify in your eyes my adoption for it of an arrangement, and my 

 choice for it of a set of topics, which that local position has suggested 

 to me. If I were to say that I had chosen for the subject of this 

 address the bearings of the studies which it is the business of my life 

 to teach here, upon the interests of the medical profession, I should 

 be giving it too ambitious a title ; it is but with some and with few 

 of these bearings that I propose or feel myself competent to deal. 

 I shall limit myself, firstly, by selecting only such topics as, having 

 been pressed forcibly upon my own attention in my own peculiar 

 course of labour, have come to assume, in my own eyes at least, a 

 considerable importance, and have seemed, in consequence, not 

 unlikely to prove possessed of interest for others also ; and I shall 

 limit myself, secondly, by abstaining from going over ground 

 which has, within my own knowledge, been occupied by persons 

 who have on previous occasions stood in the position which I now 

 occupy before you. 



Let me throw the heads of my address into a few short phrases, 

 and say that I propose, with your permission, to speak firstly of the 

 bearing of certain portions of the very extensive range of subjects, 

 comprised under the titles Anatomy and Physiology, upon certain 

 points and problems which come before the attention of the medical 

 practitioner in the course of his actual duties ; and secondly, of the 

 illustration which some of the conclusions recently come to in 

 Biological Science cast upon the validity of certain principles which 

 are ordinarily looked upon as authoritative canons for the regulation 



