80 'i REPORT— 1897. 



attended by many ills ; in the problems of protoplasm the animal physiologist 

 touches hands with the botanist, and both find that under different names they are 

 striving towards the same end. 



Closely allied to and indeed a part of the above line of inquiry is the study of 

 the physiological attributes of the cell and of their connection with its intrinsic 

 organisation. This is a study which, during the last dozen years, has borne no 

 mean fruits ; but it is an old study, one which has been worked at from time to 

 time, reviving again and again as new methods offered new opportunities. More- 

 over, it wiU probably come directly before us in our sectional work, and therefore 

 I will say nothing more of it here. 



Still another striking feature of the past dozen years has been the advance of 

 our knowledge in regard to those events of the animal body which we have now 

 learnt to speak of as 'internal secretion.' This knowledge did not begin in this 

 period. The first note was sounded long ago in the middle of the century, when 

 Claude Bernard made known what he called ' the glycogenic function of the liver.' 

 Men, too, were busy with the thyroid body and the suprarenal capsules long before 

 the meeting of the British Association at Montreal. But it was since then, namely 

 in 1889, that Minkowski published his discovery of the diabetic phenomena result- 

 ing from the total removal of the pancreas. That, I venture to think, was of 

 momentous value, not only as a valuable discovery in itself, but especially, perhaps, 

 in confirming and fixing our ideas as to internal secretion, and in encouraging 

 further research. 



Minkowski's investigation possessed this notable feature, that it was clear, 

 sharp and decided, and, moreover, the chief factor, namely sugar, was subject to 

 quantitative methods. The results of removing the thyroid body had been to a 

 large extent general, often vague, and in some cases uncertain ; so much so as to 

 justify, to a certain extent, the doubts held by some as to the validity of the con- 

 clusion that the symptoms witnessed were really and simply due to the absence 

 of the organ removed. The observer who removes the pancreas has to deal with 

 a tangible and measurable result, the appearance of sugar in the urine. About 

 this there can be no mistake, no uncertainty. And the confidence thus engendered 

 in the conclusion that the pancreas, besides secreting the pancreatic juice, effects 

 some notable change in the blood passing through it, spread to the analogous 

 conclusions concerning the thyroid and the suprarenal, and moreover suggested 

 further experimental inquiry. By those inquiries all previous doubts have been 

 removed ; it is not now a question whether or no the thyroid carries on a so-called 

 internal secretion ; the problem is reduced to finding out what it exactly does and 

 how exactly it does it. Moreover, no one can at the present day suppose that this 

 feature of internal secretion is confined to the thyroid, the suprarenal, and the 

 pancreas ; it needs no spirit of prophecy to foretell that the coming years will add 

 to physiological science a large and long chapter, the first marked distinctive verses 

 of which belong to the dozen years which have just passed away. 



The above three lines of advance are of themselves enough to justify a certain 

 pride on the part of the physiologist as to the share which his science is taking in 

 the forward movements of the time. And yet I venture to think that each and all of 

 these is wholly overshadowed by researches of another kind, through which 

 knowledge has made, during the past dozen years or so, a bound so momentous 

 and so far-reaching that all other results gathered in during the time seem to 

 shrink into relative insignificance. 



It was a little before my period, in the year 1879, that Golgi published his modest 

 note, ' Un nuovo processo di technica microscopica.' ^ That was the breaking out 

 from the rocks of a little stream which has since swollen into a great flood. It is 

 quite true that long before a new era in our knowledge of the central nervous system 

 had been opened up by the works of Ferrier and of Fritsch and Hitzig. Between 

 1870 and 1880 progress in this branch of physiology had been continued and rapid. 

 Yet that progress had left much to be desired. On the one hand the experimental 



' Rendiconti del reale Istttuio Zombardo, vol. xii. p. 206. My friend Professor 

 Minot has called my attention to the fact that Golgi really published his method 

 before this, viz , in his ' Ricerche sulla fina struttura dei bulbi olfattorii,' 1875, 



