740 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION I. 



Section I.— PHYSIOLOGY. 



President op the Section. — Professor A. B. Macallum, M.A., 

 Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



The record of investigation of the phenomena of the life of animal and vegetable 

 cells for the last eighty years constitutes a body of knowledge which is of 

 imposing magnitude and of surpassing interest to all who are concerned in the 

 [ tudies that bear on the organic world. The results won during that period will 

 always constitute, as they do now, a worthy memorial of the intense enthusiasm 

 of the scientific spirit which has been a distinguishing feature of the last six 

 decades of the nineteenth century. We are to-day, in consequence of that 

 activity, at a point of view the attainment of which could not have been pre- 

 dicted half a century ago. 



This body of knowledge, this lore which we call cytology, is still with all this 

 achievement in one respect an undeveloped science. It is chiefly — nay, almost 

 wholly — concerned with the structural or morphological side of the cell, while of 

 the functional phenomena our knowledge is only of the most general kind, and 

 the reason is not far to seek. What little we know of the physiological side of 

 the cell — as, for example, of cellular secretion, absorption, and nutrition — has 

 only to a very limited extent been the outcome of observations directed to that 

 end. It is in very great part the result of all the inferences and generalisations 

 drawn from the data of morphological research. This knowledge is not the less 

 valuable or the less certain because it has been so won, but simply because of its 

 source and of the method by which we have gained it, it is of a fragmentary 

 character, and therefore less satisfactory in our estimation. 



This state of our knowledge has affected — or, to express it more explicitly, has 

 fashioned — our concept of living matter. When we think of the cell it is 

 idealised as a morphological element only. The functional aspect is not ignored, 

 but we know very little about it, and we veil our ignorance by classing its 

 manifestations as vital phenomena. 



It is true that in the last twenty years, and more particularly in the last ten, 

 wo have gathered something from biochemical research. We know much con- 

 cerning ferment or catalytic action, of the physical characters of colloids, of the 

 constitution of proteins, and their synthesis in the laboratory promises to be an 

 achievement of the near future. We are also in a position to understand a little 

 more clearly what happens in proteins when, on decomposition in the cell, they 

 yield the waste products, urea, and other metabolites, with carbon dioxide and 

 water. Further, fats can be formed in the laboratory from glycerine and fatty 

 acids, a large number of which have also been synthesis*":!, and a very large 

 majority of the sugars of the aldohexose type have been bailt up from simpler 

 compounds. These facts indicate that some of the results of the activity of 

 animal and vegetable cells may be paralleled in the laboratory, but that is as far 

 as the resemblance extends. The methods of the laboratory are not as yet thore 

 of nature. In the formation of carbohydrates, for example, the chlorophyll- 

 li ilding cell makes use of processes of the most speedy and effective character, 



