806 REPORT— 1897. 



hard a task, that of traciug out the path of an auditory impulse through the con- 

 fused maze of fibre and cell presented by the lower and middle brain. Of the 

 meclianism of sight we seemed even then to have better knowledge, but how much 

 more clearly do we, so to speak, see vision now ? So also with all other sensations, 

 even those most obscure ones of touch and pain; indeed, all over the nervous 

 system light seems breaking in a most remarkable way. 



This great and significant progress we owe, I venture to say, to Golgi, to the 

 method introduced by him ; and I for one cannot help being glad that this impor- 

 tant contribution to science, as well as another contingent and most valuable one, 

 the degeneration method of Marchi, should be among the many tokens that Italy, 

 the mother of all sciences in times gone by, is now once more taking her right 

 place in scientitic no less than in political life. We owe, I say, this progress to 

 (Grolgi in the sense that the method introduced by him was the beginning of the 

 new researches. We owe, moreover, to Golgi not tbe mere technical introduction 

 of the method, but something more. He himself pointed out the theoretical signifi- 

 cance of the results which his method produced ; and if in this he has been out- 

 stripped and even corrected by others, his original merit must not be allowed to 

 be forgotten. Those others are many, in many lands. Among the first was one 

 Frithiof Nansen, whose brilliant though brief memoir makes us selfish physio- 

 logists regret that the icy charms of the North Pole so early froze in him' the 

 bubbling spring of histological research. From the rest two names stand 

 out conspicuous. If rejuvenescent Italy invented the method, another ancient 

 country, whose fame, once brilliant in the past, like that of Italy, sufi'ered 

 in later times an eclipse, produced the man who, above all others, has showed us how 

 to use it. At the meeting at Montreal a voice from Spain telling of things physio- 

 logical would have seemed a voice crying out of the wilderness ; to-day the name 

 of Ramon-y-Cayal is in every physiologist's mouth. That is one name, but there 

 is yet another. Years ago, when those of us who are now veterans and see signs 

 that it is time for us to stand aside were spelling out the primer of histology, one 

 name was always before us as that of a man who touched every tissue and touched 

 each well. It is a consoling thought to some of us elder ones that histological 

 research seems to be an antidote to senile decay. As the companion of the young 

 Spaniard in the pregnant work on the histology of the central nervous system done 

 in the eighties and the nineties of the century, must be named the name of the 

 man who was brilliant in the fifties, Albert von Kolliker, 



When I say that the progi-ess of our knowledge of the central nervous system 

 during the past thirteen years has been largely due to the application of the method 

 of Golgi, I do not mean that it, alone and by itself, has done what has been done. 

 That is not the way of science. Almost every thrust forward in science is a result- 

 ant of concurrent forces working along different lines : and in most cases at least 

 significant progress comes when efforts from different quarters meet and join hands. 

 And especially as regards methods it is true that their value and effect depend 

 on their coming at their allotted times. As I said above, neither experimental 

 investigation nor clinical observation nor histological inquiry by the then known 

 methods, had been idle before 1880. They had moreover borne even notable 

 fruits, but one thing was lacking for their fuller fruition. The experimental and 

 clinical results all postulated the existence of clear definite paths for impulses 

 within the central nervous system, of paths moreover which, while clear and 

 sharp, were manifold and, under certain conditions, alternate or even vicarious, 

 and were so constructed that the impulses as they swept along them underwent from 

 time to time — that is, at some place or other — transformations or at least changes 

 in nature. But the methods of histological investigations available before that of 

 Golgi, though they taught us much, failed to furnish such an analysis of the tangle 

 of grey and white matter as would clearly indicate the paths required. This the 

 method of Golgi did, or rather is doing. Where gold failed silver has succeeded, 

 and is succeeding. Thanks to the black tract which silver when handled in a cer- 

 tain way leaves behind it in the animal body, as indeed it does elsewhere, we can 

 now trace out, within the central nervous system, the pathway afforded by the 

 nerve cell and the nerve cell alone. We see its dendrites branching out in various 



