TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 803 



constructing too mucli a kind of chemistry of their own. But that, may I say, has 

 in part been so because they did not receive from their distinctly chemical brethren 

 the help of which they were in need. May I go so far as to say that to us physio- 

 logists these our brethren seemed to be lagging somewhat behind, at least along 

 those lines of then- science which directly told on our inquiries ? That is, however, 

 no longer the case. They are producing work and giving us ideas which we can 

 carry straight into physiological problems. The remarkable work of Emil Fischer 

 on sugars, one of the bright results of mj' period of thirteen years, may fully be 

 regarded as opening up a new era in the physiology of the carbohydrates, opening 

 up a new era because it has shown us the way how to investigate physiological 

 problems on purely and distinctively chemical lines. Not in the carbohydrates 

 only, but in all directions our younger investigators are treating the old problems 

 by the new chemical methods; the old physiological chemistry is passing away; 

 now^here, perhaps, is the outlook more promising than in this direction ; and we 

 may at any time receive the news that the stubborn old fortress of the proteids has 

 succumbed to the new attack. 



Another marked feature of the period has been the increasing attention given 

 to the study of the lower forms of life, using their simpler structures and more 

 diffuse phenomena to elucidate the more general properties of living matter. 

 During the greater part of the present century physiologists have, as a rule, chosen 

 as subjects of their observations almost exclusively the vertebrata ; by far the 

 larger part of the results obtained during this time have been gained by inquiries 

 restricted to some half a dozen kinds of backboned animals ; the frog and the 

 myograph, the dog and the kymograph have almost seemed the alpha and the 

 omega of the science. This has been made a reproach by some, but, I cannot help 

 thinking, unjustly. Physiology is, in its broad meaning, the unravelling of the 

 potentialities of things in the condition which we call living. lu the higher animals 

 the evolution by differentiation has bi'ought these potentialities, so to speak, near 

 the surface, or even laid them bare as actual properties capable of being grasped. 

 In the lower animals they still lie deep buried in primeval sameness ; and we may 

 grope among them in vain unless we have a clue fnrniahed by the study of the 

 higher animal. This truth seems to have been early recognised during the progress 

 of the science. In the old time, observers such aa Spallanzani, with but a mode- 

 rate amount of accumulated knowledge behind them, and a host of problems before 

 them, with but few lines of inquiry as yet definitely laid down, were free to choose 

 the subjects of their investigation where they pleased, and in the wide field open 

 to them prodded so to speak among all living things, indifferent whether they 

 possessed a backbone or no. But it soon became obvious that the study of the 

 special problems of the more highly organised creature was more fruitful, or 

 at least more easily fruitful, than that of the general problems of the simpler 

 foi-ms ; and hence it came about that inquiry, as it went on, grew more and more 

 limited to the former. But an increasing knowledge of the laws of life as exempli- 

 fied in the differentiated phenomena of the mammal is increasingly fitting us 

 for a successful attack on the more general phenomena of the lowly creatures 

 possessing little more than that molecular organisation, if such a phrase be per- 

 mitted, which alone supplies the conditions for the manifestation of vital activities. 

 And, though it may be true that in all periods men have from time to time laboured 

 at this theme, I think that I am not wrong in saying that the last dozen yeai-s or 

 so mark a distinct departure both as regards the number of researches directed to 

 it, and also, what is of greater moment, as regards the definiteness and clearness of 

 the results thereby obtained. One has only to look at the results recorded in the 

 valuable treatises of Verwom and Biedermann, whether obtained by the authors 

 themselves or by others, to feel great hope that in the immediately near future a 

 notable advance will be made in our grasp of the nature of that varying collection 

 of molec-alar conditions, potencies and changes, slimy hitherto to the intellectual 

 no less than to the physical touch, which we are in the habit of denoting by the 

 more or less magical word protoplasm. And perhaps one happy feature of such an 

 advance wUl be one step in the way of that reintegration which men of science 

 fondly hope may ultimately follow the differentiation of studies now so fierce and 



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