126 REPORT— 1876. 



Akatohx and Phtsiologt. 



The Future of PJiijsiological. Research. — Address to the Department of Anatowy 

 and Physiology. By John Geet M'Kendeick, M.D., FeJloiv of the Royal 

 Colleye'of Physicians, and of the Royal Society, of Edinburgh. 



Bearing in mind the fact that one of the objects of the British Association is to 

 interest the public in the advancement of scientific truth, it has been the practice 

 of the Pi'esidents of the Tarious Sections to make some remarks of a general cha- 

 racter, or to give a remme of the recent progress of science in their particidar 

 department. I shall follow so far the example of my predecessors. I shall not 

 attempt to enumerate, far less to describe, the contributions made to anatomical 

 and physiological science during the past year, because that vvoidd entail a long 

 and wearisome report regarding investigations with which most of us are abeady 

 acquainted by the perusal of those excellent summaries that appear from time to 

 time in our scientific and medical peiiodicals. With the Tiew of limiting the 

 scope of this address, I propose to oft'er a few observations bearing generally 

 upon some of the scientific and social relations of anatomy and physiology, with 

 the view of interesting the public in what we have been doing, and what we hope 

 yet to do. 



These sciences present different views of the same great system of truth. Each 

 can be conceived as existing independently, wliile at the same time the one science 

 is the complement of the other. Anatomy is the science of organic form, while 

 physiology is that of organic f miction. The anatomist investigates structure, its 

 form, general arrangements, and laws, and he may include in his survey the pnr- 

 poses or functions which the strncture fulfils. Eecently an opinion has been pre- 

 valent, and has cropped up in various quarters, that anatomy is but a preparatoiy 

 science for physiology. This opinion has probably arisen in consequence of the 

 rapid growth of physiological science during the last twenty or thirty years. But 

 there can be no doubt that anatomy has a role of her own by no means inferior to 

 that of physiology. She lias to educe formal laws which determine the structure 

 of organized bodies and their parts, and thus she establishes the basis for scientific 

 classification and arrangement. Anatomy is the beginning, of coiu-se, of all medical 

 education, and the groundworlc on which the practical arts of medicine and sur- 

 geiy are reared ; but in a broader sense, the science has to do with the structure of 

 every animal, from the simplest to the most complex ; and from the facts obtained 

 in the investigation of the structure of any animal, we are able to recognize the 

 relationships it has with other animals, or, in other words, its position in the Zoolo- 

 gical scale. 



Methods op Anatomy. 



The methods of anatomical science are dissection, description, and comparison. 

 These methods have been followed by anatomists from the birth of the science ; but 

 in recent times they have been largely supplemented by the use of the microscope, 

 and by the emplo;^Tuent of various modes of preparing tissues for microscopical 

 inquiiy. Now-a-days the anatomist not only describes naked-eye appearances dis- 

 played by the art of dissection, but he scrutinizes every tissue and organ with the 

 aid of the microscope. Hence it is, the historian of the progress of anatomical 

 knowledge in this centuiy will have to relate, as one of its chief features, the deve- 

 lopment of microscopical anatomy or histology. In no department of scientific 

 work is greater activity manifested at present than in this. Scarcely a month 

 passes without adding materially to our stores of knowledge, so as to make it 

 almost impossible for a man to keep abreast of modern histology, and at the same 

 time devote due attention to other departments of anatomy and physiology. In 

 Germany and France men devote their energies to histology as to the business of 

 their lives, and occupy chairs in many uni^-ersities distinct from those of anatomy 



