96 report — 1865. 



who prides himself on his strength, or whose strength is to him for a fortune — ■ 

 the Mother, rich or poor, who yearns by night and by day for the healthy growth 

 of her tender offspring — the Physician or Philanthropist, who desires to avert or 

 to relieve diseases among communities or individuals of men — each and all of these 

 are alike really interested in the steady progress of the most abstruse philosophical 

 speculations of the physiologist, as certainly as of the commoner rules of a healthy 

 life, which are to be safely deduced from them. 



In reference therefore to the opinion which was just now adverted to, I think that 

 Biology is to be extricated from the hands of physicians only in a limited sense. 

 No persons have so many grounds for advancing it as they. The physician, abs- 

 tractedly considered, combines all the characters to which I have alluded. He is, 

 in respect of the health of the people, a Statesman ; as a Man, like others, a Reli- 

 gious man ; not less than others, Father and Husband ; as much as any, a Working- 

 man ; by education, more or less, a Man of Science. In short, abstractedly con- 

 sidered,! say it is his special duty at least to advocate and, if he can, to promote 

 the advance of physiological knowledge unfettered and free, — 

 1st. As a pure Science. 

 2nd. As the basis of the Medical Art. 



3rd. As of practical utility in helping to regulate the lives and habits of society 

 at large. 



Now the hindrances to a perfectly free study of Physiological Science arise from 

 two causes : — 



1st. The intrinsic difficulty of the subject; and 

 2nd. The prejudices of mankind. 



To the consideration of these two points it may not be useless for us to devote 

 some attention. 



1st. As to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject. 



Although the wisdom of this Association entitles this Meeting a iSfai-Seetion, I 

 am among the minority who cannot understand the force of the arguments which go 

 to class Biology (which term may be now used synonymously with Physiology) 

 as a subordinate subject. Being, when properly considered, the most complicated 

 of all the subject matter debated at this Association, it cannot be really subordi- 

 nate to any, least of all to Zoology and Botany, which it distinctly ('/(eludes. It 

 may be an open question whether Physiology be a branch of Physics and Che- 

 mistry ; it is not an open question whether it includes the knowledge of the cha- 

 racteristics upon which the classification of all entities that are said to have life 

 is based. 



It were an impertinence, however, now to spend time in arguing about the 

 Classification of Sciences. It is sufficient for us to note the vast range of Biology, 

 a range which every year makes more wide. 



The knowledge of "the actions of living beings depends, and necessarily depends, 

 not only upon what may be learnt intrinsically, so to say, in the living beings 

 themselves, but upon the collateral advancing waA'es of physical and chemical 

 inquiry. How largely, for instance, in the last few years, have the idea of Con- 

 servation of Force in Physics, and the remarkable advance of the Synthetical 

 operations of the Laboratory affected our fundamental conceptions of the actions in 

 living bodies, and increased the chances of our advancing a step towards the know- 

 ledge of what is essential in the phenomena which we designate Life. 



The intrinsic difficulty of this search in the present day consists not so much in the 

 morphological examination of beings, on the one hand, as complex as Man with all 

 his varieties, and the problems thereto attaching ( though this morphological ex- 

 amination of Man in all his varieties is still incomplete), nor in the examination, on 

 the other hand, of beings so inexplicably simple as our own Amabel, or as the 

 ancient (and how ancient !) Eozoon Canadense, but in the causes and conditions of 

 the actual or potential changes in the minutest portions of any one creatine. The 

 labours of Goodsir and Yirehow and Beale, and of many others labouring in the 

 same direction and in various ways, have shown, what was indeed long suspected, 

 that the solution of the problem of the actual relation between Function and Organ 

 may be sought, and has to be sought, among parts mechanically almost as fine as 

 the Chemical Atom ; for we have life, secretion, motion, generation in parts, to our 



