OcTOBER 2, 1902] 
NATURE 
567 
(1) A typical totemic community with totem-kin houses 
(Kiwai). 
(2) A typical totemic community with territorial grouping of 
the kins. Although there is totem exogamy, the marriage 
restrictions are regulated by relationship. The former mother- 
right has comparatively recently been replaced by father-right, 
but there are many survivals from matriarchy (Western tribe, 
Torres Straits). - 
(3) A community in which totemism has practically lapsed, 
with village exogamy and marriage restrictions regulated by 
relationship, patriarchy with survivals from matriarchy (Eastern 
tribe, Torres Straits). 
(4) Total absence of totemism (?), village exogamy (Mekeo). 
I do not assert this is a natural sequence, but it looks like 
one, and it appears to indicate another of the ways out of 
totemism. It is suggestive that this order also indicates the 
application of the several peoples to agriculture: the people of 
Kiwai are semi-nomadic, those of the Mekeo district are firmly 
attachedtothe land. This constraint of the soil must have oper- 
ated ina similar manner elsewhere (cf ‘‘ L’Année Sociologique,” 
v. 1902, pp. 330, 333). The territorial exogamy occasionally 
found in Australia cannot be explained as being due to agricul- 
ture ; a rigid limitation of hunting grounds may here have had 
a similar effect. 
In offering these remarks to-day I desire, above all, to 
impress on you the need there is for more work in the field. 
When one surveys the fairly extensive literature of totemism 
one is struck with the very general insufficiency of the evidence ; 
as a matter of fact, full and precise information is lamentably 
lacking. The foundations upon which students at home have 
to build their superstructures of generalisation and theory are 
usually of too slight a character to support these erections with 
much chance of their permanence, There is only one remedy 
for this, and that is more extensive and more thorough field 
work. The problems connected with totemism bear upon many 
of the most important phases in the social and religious evolu- 
tion of man, the solution of which can only be obtained within 
the space of a few years. The delay of each year in the investi- 
gation of primitive peoples means that so much less information 
is possible to be obtained. There is no exaggeration in this. 
Those who have a practical experience of backward man and 
who have travelled in out-of-the-way places can testify as to the 
surprising rapidity with which the old order changeth. In sober 
earnestness I appeal to all those who are interested in the 
history and character of man, whether they be theologians, 
historians, sociologists, psychologists or anthropologists, to face 
the plain fact that the only available data for the solution of 
many problems of the highest interest are daily slipping away 
beyond recovery. 
SECTION I. 
PHYSIOLOGY. 
OPENING AppDREss By W. D. HALLIBURTON, M.D., F.R.S., 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN K1NG’s COLLEGE, LONDON, 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
The Present Position of Chemical Physiology. 
AN engineer who desires to thoroughly understand how a 
machine works must necessarily know its construction. If the 
machine becomes erratic in its action, and he wishes to put it 
into proper working order, a preliminary acquaintance with its 
normal structure and function is an obvious necessity. 
If we apply this to the more delicate machinery of the animal 
body, we at once see how a knowledge of function (physiology 
and pathology) is impossible without a preliminary acquaintance 
with structure or anatomy. 
It is therefore not surprising, it is indeed in the nature of 
things, that physiology originated with the great anatomists of 
the past. It was not until Vesalius and Harvey by tedious 
dissections laid bare the broad facts of structure that any 
theorising concerning the uses of the constituent organs of the 
body had any firm foundation. i 
Important and essential as the knowledge is that can be re- 
vealed by the scalpel, the introduction and use of the microscope 
furnished physiologists with a still more valuable instrument. 
By it much that was before unseen came into view, and micro- 
scopic anatomy and physiology grew in stature and knowledge 
simultaneously. 
NO. 1718, VOL. 66] 
The weapons in the armoury of the modern physiologist are 
multitudinous in number and complex in construction, and 
enable him in the experimental investigation of his subject to 
accurately measure and record the workings of the different 
parts of the machinery he hasto study. But preeminent among 
these instruments stands the test-tube and the chemical opera- 
tions typified by that simple piece of glass. 
Herein one sees at once a striking distinction between the 
mechanism of a living animal and that of a machine like a 
steam engine or a watch. It is quite possible to be an excellent 
watchmaker or to drive a steam engine intelligently without 
any chemical knowledge of the various metals that enter into its 
composition. In order to set the mechanism right if it goes 
wrong, all the preliminary knowledge which is necessary is of 
an anatomical nature. The parts of which an engine is com- 
posed are stable ; the oil that lubricates it and the fuel that 
feeds it never become integral parts of the machinery. But 
with the living engine all this is different. The parts of which 
it is made take up the nutriment or fuel and assimilate it, thus 
building up new living substance to replace that which is de- 
stroyed in the wear and tear associated with activity. This 
condition of unstable chemical equilibrium is usually designated 
metabolism, and metabolism is the great and essential attribute 
of a living as compared with a non-living thing. 
It seems childish at the present day, and before such an 
audience as this, to point out how essential it is to know the 
chemical structure as well as the anatomical structure of the 
component parts of the body. But the early anatomists to whom 
I have alluded had no conception of the connection of the two 
sciences, Speaking of Vesalius, Sir Michael Foster says: 
‘*The great anatomist would no doubt have made use of his 
bitterest sarcasms had someone assured him that the fantastic 
school which was busy with occult secrets and had hopes of 
turning dross into gold would one day join hands in the investi- 
gation of the problems of life with the exact and clear anatomy 
so dear to him.” Nor did Harvey, any more than Vesalius, 
pay heed to chemical learning. The scientific men of his time 
ignored and despised the beginning of that chemical knowledge 
which in later years was to become one of the foundations of 
physiology and the mainstay of the art of medicine. 
The earliest to recognise this important connection was one 
whose name is usually associated more with charlatanry than 
with truth, namely, Paracelsus, and fifty years after the death 
of that remarkable and curious personality his doctrines were 
extended and developed by van Helmont. In spite, however, 
of van Helmont’s remarkable insight into the processes of 
digestion and fermentation, his work was marred by the mys- 
ticism of the day, which called in the aid of supernatural agencies 
to explain what could not otherwise be fully comprehended. 
In the two hundred and fifty years that have intervened 
between the death of van Helmont and the present day, alchemy 
became a more and more exact science and changed its name to 
chemistry, and a few striking names stand out of men who 
were able to take the new facts of chemistry and apply them to 
physiological uses. Of these one may mention Mayow, Lower, 
Boerhaave, Réaumur, Borelli, Spallanzani and Lavoisier. 
Mulder in Holland and Liebig in Germany bring us almost to 
the present time, and I think they may be said to share the 
honour of being regarded as the fathers of modern chemical 
physiology. This branch of science was first placed on a firm 
basis by Wohler when he showed that organic compounds can 
be built out of their elements in the laboratory, and his first suc- 
cessful experiments in connection with the comparatively 
simple substance urea have been followed by numberless others, 
which have made organic chemistry the vast subject it is 
to-day. . 
Sir Michael Foster’s book on the History of Physiology, 
from which I have already quoted, treats of the older workers 
who laid the foundations of our science, and whose names I 
have not done much more than barely mention. Those inter- 
ested in the giants of the past should consult it. But what I 
propose to take up this morning is the work of those who have 
during more recent days been engaged in the later stages of 
the building, The edifice is far from completion even now. It 
is one of the charms of physiological endeavour that, as the older 
areas yield their secrets to the explorers, new ones are opened 
out which require equally careful investigation. 
If even a superficial survey of modern physiological literature 
is taken, one is at once,struck with the great preponderance of 
papers and books which have a chemical bearing. In this the 
