100 REPORT— 18G5. 



chemists will not only eliminate gradually all remaining error, but will make more 

 definite the properties of therapeutical agents. In illustration it is sufficient to refer 

 to some of the investigations of Claude Bernard, from whose great skill, combined 

 with philosophic power, much may be expected. Yet it may be doubted if the 

 importance ot this alliance between Science and Medicine to the community at large 

 is yet fully understood by the Legislature. Under the recent Medical Act, the 

 whole expense of constructing a National Pharmacopoeia was thrown by Parliament 

 on the existing Practitioners of Medicine, and the cost of its future maintenance was 

 charged on the Students of Medicine: the national funds are to contribute nothing 

 towards the great benefit, a benefit accruing to every one at some period of life, of 

 a genuine and philosophical revision of known, or the discovery of new, curative 

 agents. Experiment alone can decide conclusively on the mode of operation of 

 various agents on the human body and on animals. These experiments are always 

 difficult, often costly. The Government, as I said, do not acknowledge the duty of 

 providing funds. Perhaps the Medical Council might. It is indeed charged with 

 the administration of the only Public Funds that are applicable to keeping on a 

 level with modern science the National Catalogue of Remedial Agents and the 

 mode of preparing them. If it could be induced to expend £'1000 a year, as under 

 proper management it easily might, in experiments and reports bearing on the 

 physiological action of preventive or remedial agents, sometimes perhaps sug- 

 gested and aided by the British Association, what might not be the fruit to 

 science and to the public and private health ? 



I have been assuming, what no one here will question, that the basis of Medi- 

 cine is knowledge of biological laws. It is so, but only in the wide sense assigned 

 at the outset to biological pursuits ; viz. the study of the laws of decay as well as of 

 growth — growth and decay of species as well as of individuals. But I must guard 

 myself by saying that this does not include the whole basis of medicine. Physio- 

 logical experiment is necessary to obtain the laws of action on healthy bodies, but 

 alone it does not explain the laws of action on perverted organic structures or 

 functions, as is seen in the common instance of tbe different effect of opium on a 

 man in health and on a man in disease. Clinical observation is of course beyond 

 physiological research, and must, from its far more limited field, follow rather than 

 precede. It aims at applying, in due course, all safe and established results of pre- 

 vious physiological inquiry ; and adds the deductions from investigations exclu- 

 sively its own. 



Much remains to be done in comparing the effects of agents, and the causes of 

 those effects on man and on the inferior animals respectively. The knoAvledge 

 which exists on these subjects has become, I need not say, both extensive and 

 precise. But new problems are constantly arising from the discovery of new 

 Toxic agents. Even new diseases occur, as is well instanced by Cholera, implying 

 either new conditions of circumstances external to man, or new combinations of 

 the internal conditions of man. 



Accordingly fresh experiments are perpetually required to meet the new pro- 

 blems ; and it has become the interest and almost the duty of States to specially 

 train and to countenance skilled experts familiar with the most recent metbods 

 and researches in these directions, with a view not only to fresh scientific know- 

 ledge, but to the great practical results that may be obtained. It is sufficient to 

 refer as illustrations to Bernard's experiments, such as those on the Woorara — to 

 the question of Physiological Antidotes — and to the more precise notions of the 

 Physiological causation and mode of action of Fever Poison. 



These you will observe, though apparently what are called medical questions, 

 are not less physiological questions proper, of vast importance to mankind. 



A few more words in another aspect, and I will not venture further to trouble 

 the Section, or delay our detailed work, which is ample enough. I have implied, 

 what is sufficiently obvious, that Physiology proper (I exclude such questions as 

 the evolution hypothesis, which cannot be proved in this way) has become uncom- 

 promisingly precise, and that nothing will stand which does not bear the crucial 

 tests of observation, and where possible of experiment. But the experiments can- 

 not in the present advanced state of Physics and of Chemistry be devised by ordi- 

 nary men, nor even executed by them. Consequently every year old statements 



