800 REPORT— 1897. 



is at once pedantic and incorrect, and yet there is none other ; and, in the absence 

 of such a better term, I shall be forgiven if I venture at times to use the seemingly- 

 narrow word English as really meaning something much broader than British in 

 its very broadest sense. 



Using English in this sense, I may, I think, venture to say that the thirteen 

 years which separate 1884 from to-day have witnessed a:iiong English people a 

 development of opportunities for physiological study such as no other like period 

 has seen. It is not without significance that only a year or two previous to this 

 period, in England proper, in little England, neither of the ancient Universities of 

 Oxford and Cambridge, which, historically at least, represent the fullest academical 

 aspirations of the nation, possessed a chair of physiology ; the present professors, who 

 are the first, were both appointed in 1883. Up to that time the science of physi- 

 ology had not been deemed worthy, by either university, of a distinctive professorial 

 mechanism. The act of these ancient institutions was only a manifestation of 

 modern impulses, shared also by the metropolis and by the provinces at large. 

 Whereas up to that time the posts for teaching physiology, by whatever name 

 they were called, had been in most cases held by men whose intellectual loins 

 were girded for other purposes than physiology, and who used the posts as step- 

 ping-stones for what they considered better things, since that time, as each post 

 became vacant, it has almost invariably been filled by men wishing and purposing 

 at least to devote their whole energies to the science. Scotland, in many respects 

 the forerunner of England in intellectual matters, had not 80 much need of change ; 

 but she, too, has moved in the same direction, as has also the sister island. 



And if we turn to this Western Continent, we find in Canada and in the 

 States the same notable enlargement of physiological opportunity, or even a still 

 more notable one. If the English-speaking physiologist dots on the map each 

 place on this Western Hemisphere which is an academic focus of his science, he may 

 well be proud of the opportunities now afforded for the development of English 

 physiology ; and the greater part of this has come within the last thirteen years. 



Professorial chairs or their analogues are, however, after all but a small part of 

 the provision for the development of physiological science. The heart of physiology 

 is the laboratory. It is this which sends the life-blood through the frame ; and in 

 respect to this, perhaps, more than to anything else, has the progress of the past 

 thirteen years been striking. Doubtless, on both sides of the waters there were 

 physiological laboratories, and good ones, in 1884 ; but how much have even these 

 during that perod been enlarged and improved, and how many new ones have 

 been added? In how many places, even right up to about 1884, the professor or 

 lecturer was fain to be content with mere lecture experiments and a simple course 

 of histology, with perhaps a few chemical exercises for his students ! Now each 

 teacher however modest his post, feels and says that the authorities under whom 

 he works are bound to provide him with the means of leading his students along 

 the only path by which the science can be truly entered upon, that by which each 

 learner repeatsfor himself the fundamental observations on which the science isbased. 



But there is a still larger outcome from the professorial chair and the physio- 

 loo-ical laboratory than the training of the student; these are opportunities not 

 for teaching only, but also for research. And perhaps in no respect has the 

 development during the past thirteen years been so marked as in this. Never so 

 clearly as during this period has it become recognised that each post for teaching 

 is no less a post for learning, that among academic duties the making knowledge 

 is as urgent as the distributing it, and that among professorial qualifications the 

 "ift of garnering in new truths is at least as needful as facility in the didactic 

 exposition of old ones. Thirteen years has seen a great change in this matter, 

 and the progress has been perhaps greater on this side of the water than on the 

 other so far as English-speaking people are concerned. We on the other side 

 have witnessed with envy the establishment on this side of a university, physio- 

 logy having in it an honoured place, the keynote of which is the development of 

 original research. It will, I venture to think, be considered a strong confirmation 

 of my present theme that the Clark University at Worcester was founded only 

 ten years ago. 



