100 PHYSIOLOGY AND NATIONAL NEEDS 



physiological training may be used in the advance- 

 ment of medicine. But it must be distinctly under- 

 stood that the study of physiology must be under- 

 taken in no utilitarian spirit. 



The object of the physiologist must be to attempt 

 to solve all the problems of the way in which living 

 matter acts without considering whether the know- 

 ledge may be of use to humanity. At present I 

 fear there is a great tendency to insist that all 

 investigations shall have a utilitarian object ; but 

 all experience has shown that most of the important 

 advances in the application of science to medi- 

 cine have been based upon investigations which 

 primarily seemed to have no direct bearing on the 

 well-being of mankind. 



The application to practical surgery by Lord 

 Lister of Pasteur's apparently purely academic 

 researches in the origin of life are well known to 

 every one. 



I have already referred to the apparently 

 unprofitable study of the colloidal state of matter, 

 of viscosity and of the process of osmosis none of 

 which seemed to have any possible bearing upon 

 human welfare ; and I have shown how in the hands 

 of Bayliss the knowledge thus gained was applied 

 to the treatment of " wound shock." 



When Galvani started his research on the elec- 

 trical phenomena of muscle and subsequent 

 physiologists carried these on, who would have 



