TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 799 



medical profession at their tack, and it has acted as an impartial aud independent 

 medium of communication between physiologists and the successive Secretaries of 

 State, whose business it has been to administer the Act. 



4. A fourth result of the attacks of the anti-vivisectionists has been, I may 

 perhaps be permitted to believe, the re-establishment of this Section of Phy- 

 siology of the British Association. Those who were present at the meetiDg- of the 

 Association in Nottingliam may have remarked that the gutters of that town were 

 strewn with papers which had been forced upon the members of tlie Association 

 bv the anti-vivisectors of the place. This literature, which iu a double sense may 

 be termed 'gutter literature,' teemed with flagrant misstatements, aud with vicious 

 calumnies, directed against physiologists, aud especially called I'orth, I presume, by 

 the fact that for the tirst time in the history of the British Association a pliysiologist 

 was called upon to occupy the presidential chair. We may look upon the esta- 

 hlishment of tliis Section as the reply of the Association to the false witness which 

 was borne against us at Nottingham. 



But although a special section for Physiology has been re-established, it may 

 not be advantageous that there should be one at every meeting' of the Association. 

 Physiology is above all things a practical science. It requires laboratories and 

 means of "demonstration. Pliysiologists are rarely satisfied wiili the opportunity 

 of hearing and reading papers, but require tliat, as mucli as possible, the actual 

 methods of research employed should be capable of demonstration. By this I am 

 not to be supposed to advocate the demonstration of experiiuents upon animals, 

 for there are very many subjects in Physiology which can be both worked at and 

 illustrated in a manner involving in no sense whatever the word vivisection. But in 

 order that the methods should be shown, it is important to have the appliances 

 of a laboratory at hand, and the Association frequently meets in towns which 

 are not university towns, and have no laboratories, in which, therefore, it would be 

 difficult or impossible to arrange for demonstrations of the sort that I am alluding 

 to. On this account we may well imitate the practice of the British Medical 

 Association, which establishes a Section of Physiology only when its meetings are 

 held in such a centre as is likely by the appliances which are to be found in that 

 centre to render the Section useful and efficient. Hence, in recommending the 

 establishment of a Physiological Section, it is expressly reserved that the Section 

 shall be held only at such future meetings as may seem to the Council to be 

 desirable. 



I will now invite you to consider with me one or two of the more obscure 

 subjects in the range of Physiology, subjects which are, however, creating a great, 

 almost an absorbing, interest at the present moment. The first of these sub- 

 jects relates to the structure and function of every cell iu the body. All are 

 aware that the body of every animal and of every plant is made up of minute 

 corpuscles which are formed of protoplasm, and which contain in every case at 

 least one nucleus. The protoplasm and the nucleus form the living substance of 

 the cell. Other substances may be present, but they are, in a sense, outside the 

 nucleus and protoplasm, not incorporated with their .substance. Apart from a 

 few details relating to the structure of the nucleus, this was, until quite lately, 

 practically all that we knew regarding the parts composing either the animal or 

 the vegetable cell. There appears, however, to be yet another something which, 

 although in point of size it is of very insignificant dimensions, yet in point of 

 function may perhaps be looked upon as transcending in importance, in some 

 respects, both the protoplasm and the nucleus. Not many years ago it was 

 noticed by various observers that in certain specialised animal cells the proto- 

 plasm showed a tendency to radiate from or converge towards a particular point, 

 and on further investigation it was found that at this point there was a minute 

 particle. This observation, which began, as we have seen, upon specialised cells, 

 was, after a little while, found to hold good for other and yet other cells, until, at 

 the present time, we believe that in every cell of the animal or plant body such a 

 particle exi.sts. Now, it may well be asked, why after all should so great importance 

 lae attached to this observation P To this it may be replied that, in the first place, 

 it is of importance, because it shows conclusively that the whole cell is not of a 



