PRESIDKNTIAL ADDRESS. 705 



and the tenacity witli which he kept this essential aspect in view. The faculty 

 which enahles the mind to review the varied aspects of complex phenomena and 

 to determine which of these are mere incidents, or external trappings, and which 

 constitute the core of the subject, is one which every scientific worker must 

 possess in a higher or lower degree ; it may, indeed, be confidently asserted that 

 scientific training is successful only in so far as it develops a nice and just 

 discrimination of this character. Many attain this capacity after several years of 

 labour and effort ; but in the case of rare and gifted individuals its possession 

 comes so early as to seem almost an intuitive endowment. In 1849, during his 

 student days at Edinburgh, Burdon Sanderson showed by the character of his 

 earliest scientific work that he viewed the proper aim of physiological inquiry as 

 essentially the study of processes. At the present time it may appear superfluous 

 to dwell upon the importance of this standpoint, but fifty-seven years ago this 

 aspect of the subject was rarely, in this country, a stimulating influence in physio- 

 logical work, whilst, as regards pathology, the point of view taken by Sanderson 

 was; even in 1860, probably unique. 



The obvious fact that living processes occur in connection with certain definite 

 structural forms transferred attention from the end to one of the means, and thus 

 education and research in physiology and pathology were almost entirely confined 

 to the elucidation of that structural framework in which the essential processes 

 were now displayed and now concealed. Improved methods of microscopic 

 technique revealed the complexity of this structure, and minute anatomy absorbed 

 the interest of the few physiologists and pathologists who prosecuted researches 

 in this country. Even when attention was directed to the living processes, it 

 was with an unconscious anatomical bias, and detailed descriptions of structui'al 

 framework were advanced as afltbrding a sufficient scientific explanation of the 

 character of the subtle processes which played within the structure. Yet upon 

 the Continent the great physiologists of that time had long realised that physio- 

 logical study must ascertain the characters of these processes, and that research 

 conducted along experimental lines could alone advance scientific physiology as 

 distinct from scientific anatomy. In 1852 Burdon Sanderson went from Edinburgh 

 to Paris to study the methods used in physics and cliemistry. Whilst there he 

 came under the inspiring influence of one of these great Continental physiologists, 

 Claude Bernard, and his views as to the proper end of physiological inquiry 

 received from this master ample confirmation. The sentence which I have quoted 

 from the York address sets forth with scientific precision his enlarged conception 

 of living phenomena, for whilst it asserts that the characteristics of processes form 

 the true aim of all physiological investigation, it defines the particular processes 

 which should be investigated as chemical and physical, and it p.articularises two 

 further aspects of these, the machinery for their co-ordination described as self- 

 acting, that is automatic, and the raison detre of their occurrence, which is said to 

 be the welfare of the whole organism. All these various aspects are strikingly 

 exemplified in the progress of physiology in this country and in the researches 

 now being carried on both at home and abroad ; their consideration may thus be 

 not inappropriate in a general address such as it is my privilege to deliver to-day. 



At the outset it is desirable to refer to certain wide issues which are involved in 

 the statement that the business of the physiologist is ' to acquire an exact knowledo'e 

 of the chemical and physical processes of animal life.' The limitation of physiology 

 to ascertainable characters of a chemical and physical type does not commend 

 itself to certain physiologists, physicists and chemists, who have revived under the 

 term ' neo-vitalism ' the vitalistic conceptions of older writers. They deny that 

 physiological phenomena can ever be adequately described in terms of physics and 

 chemistry, even if these terms are in the future greatly enlarged in consequence of 

 scientific progress. It is undoubted that there are many aspects of living pheno- 

 mena which in the existing state of our knowledge defy exact expression in 

 accordance with chemical and physical conceptions ; but the issues raised have a 

 deeper significance than the mere assertion of present ignorance, for those who 

 adopt 'neo-vitalism' are prepared to state not only that certain physiological 

 phenomena are, from the chemical and physical point of view, inexplicable to-day,. 



1906. z 2 



