TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 799 



Bernard had passed away some years before, but his peers might have been present 

 at Montreal. Bowman, whose classic works on muscle and kidney stand out as 

 peaks in the physiological landscape of the past, models of researches finished and 

 complete so far as the opportunities of the time would allow, fruitful beginnings 

 and admirable guides for the labours of others. Browu-Sequard, who shares with 

 Bernard the glory of having opened up the great modern path of the influence of 

 the nervous system on vascular and thus on nutritional events, and who, if he made 

 some mistakes, did many things which will last for all time. Briicke, whose 

 clear judgment, as shown in his digestive and other work, gave permanent value 

 to whatever he put forth. Du Bois Reymond, who, if he laboured in a narrow 

 path, set a brilliant example of the way in which exact physical analysis may be 

 applied to the phenomena of living beings, and in other ways had a powerful 

 influence on the progress of physiology. Bonders, whose mind seemed to have 

 caught something of the better qualities of the physiological organ to which his 

 professional life was devoted, and our knowledge of which he so largely extended 

 so sharply did he focus his mental eye on every physiological problem to which 

 he turned — and these were many and varied. Helmholtz, whose great works on 

 vision and hearing, to say nothing of his earlier distinctly physiological researches 

 make us feel that if physics gained much, physiology lost even more when the 

 physiologist turned aside to more distinctly physical inquiries. Lastly, and not 

 least, Ludwig, who by his own hands or through his pupils did so much to make 

 physiology the exact science which it is to-day, but which it was not when he 

 began his work. I say lastly, but I might add the name of one who, though 

 barred by circumstances from contributing much directly to physiology by way of 

 research, so used his powerful influence in many ways in aid of physiological 

 interests as to have helped the science onward to no mean extent, at least amono- 

 English-speaking people — I mean Huxley. All these might have met at 

 Montreal. They have all left us now. Among the peers of the men I have 

 mentioned whose chief labours were carried on in the forties, the fifties and the 

 sixties of the century, one prominent inquirer alone seems to be left, Albert von 

 Kolliker, who in his old age is doing work of which even he in his youth might 

 have been proud. The thirteen years which have swept the others away seem to 

 mark a gulf between the physiological world of to-day and that of the time iu 

 which most of their work was done. 



They are gone, but they have left behind their work and their names. Mav 

 they of the future, as I believe we of the present are doing, take up their work 

 and their example, doing work other than theirs but after their pattern, followiu-^- 

 in their steps. ° 



In the thirteen years during which these have passed away physiology has not 

 been idle. Indeed, the more we look into the period the more it seems to contain. 

 The study of physiology, as of other sciences, though it may be stimulated by 

 difiiculties (and physiology has the stimulus of a special form of opposition unknown 

 to other sciences), expands under the sunshine of opportunity and aid. And it 

 may be worth while to compare the opportunities for study of physiology in 1884 

 with those in 1897. At this meeting of the British Association I may fitly confine 

 myself I was going to say to British matters ; but I feel at this point, as others 

 have felt, the want of a suitable nomenclature. We who are gathered here 

 to-day have, with the exception of a few honoured guests from the Eastern 

 Hemisphere, one common bond, one common token of unity, and, so far as 

 I know, one only; I am speaking now of outward tokens; down deeper in 

 our nature there are, I trust, yet others. We aU speak the English tono-ue. 

 Some of us belong to what is called Great Britain and Ireland, others'' to 

 that which is sometimes spoken of as Greater Britain. But there are others 

 here who belong to neither; though English in tongue, they are in no 

 sense British. To myself, to whom the being English in speech is a fact of far 

 deeper moment than any political boundary, and who wish at the present moment 

 to deal with the study of physiology among all those who speak the English 

 tongue, there comes the great want of some word which will denote aU such. I 

 hope, indeed I think, that others feel the same want too. The term Anglo-Saxon 



