PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 633 
2. The volume of a limb or portion of intestinal wall always becomes 
diminished concomitantly with the fall of blood-pressure. 
3. The conclusion seems justified that although these drugs eliminate 
the tonic inhibitory action of the vagus, they have a simultaneous action 
on the heart substance, diminishing the output. This paralytic effect upon 
the heart is shown also by direct experiment upon this organ. 
4. By frequent administration of increasing doses of these drugs, an 
animal may be brought into a condition of tolerance within one or two 
hours, so that at the end of this time it will withstand (with compara- 
tively slight reaction) very many times the dose which would have been 
fatal at the beginning of the experiments. 
5. In small doses the respiration is quickened and rendered deeper. In 
large doses it is often paralysed immediately. 
6. The present series of experiments has not yielded results which would 
tend to encourage the use of atropine in chloroform poisoning. Adrenalin 
seems to be of much more, though limited, utility. 
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Tur Puystotocicat BAsts or SUCCESS. 
Dorina past years it has been customary for the Presidents of Sections in their 
addresses either to give a summary of recent investigations, in order to show the 
position and outlook of the branch of science appertaining to the Section, or to 
utilise the opportunity for a connected account of researches in which they them- 
selves have been engaged, and can therefore speak with the authority of personal 
experience as well as with that imparted by the presidential Chair. The growing 
wealth of publications with the special function of giving summaries and surveys 
of the different branches of science, drawn up by men ranking as authorities in 
the subjects of which they treat, renders such an interpretation of the presidential 
duties increasingly unnecessary, and the various journals which are open to 
every investigator make it difficult for me to give in an address anything which 
has not already seen the light in other forms. The Association itself, however, 
has undergone a corresponding modification. Founded as a medium of com- 
munication between workers in different parts of the country, it has gradually 
acquired the not less important significance of a tribunal from which men of 
science, leaving for a time their laboratories, can speak to an audience of intelli- 
gent laymen, including under this term all those who are engaged in the work of 
the world other than the advancement of science. These men would fain know the 
lessons that science has to teach in the living of the common life. By standing 
for a moment on the little pinnacle erected by the physicist, the chemist, or the 
botanist, they can, or should be able to, gain new hints as to the conduct of 
the affairs of themselves, their town, or their state. The enormous advance in 
the comfort and prosperity of our race during the last century has been due 
to the application of science, and this meeting of the Association may be re- 
garded as an annual mission in which an attempt is made to bring the latest 
results of scientific investigation into the daily routine of the life of the com- 
munity. 
We physiologists, as men who are laying the foundation on which medical 
knowledge must be built, have as our special preoccupation the study of man. 
Although every animal, and indeed every plant, comes within the sphere of our 
investigations, our main object is to obtain from such comparative study facts 
and principles which will enable us to elucidate the mechanism of man. In this 
task we view man, not as the psychologist or the historian does, by projecting 
into our object of study our own feelings and emotions, but by regarding him as 
