10 EEPORT— 1893. 



donment of theory for fact, of speculation for experiment. Physiologists 

 ceased to theorise because they found something better to do. May I try 

 to give you a sketch of this era of progress ? 



Great discoveries as to the structure of plants and animals had been 

 made in the course of the previous decade, those especially which had 

 resulted from the introduction of the microscope as an instrument of 

 research. By its aid Schwann had been able to show that all organised 

 structures are built up of those particles of living substance which we 

 now call cells, and recognise as the seats and sources of every kind of 

 vital activity. Hugo Mohl, working in another direction, had given the 

 name ' protoplasm ' to a certain hyaline substance which forms the lining of 

 the cells of plants, though no one as yet knew that it was the essential 

 constituent of all living structures — the basis of life no less in animals 

 than in plants. And, finally, a new branch of study — histology — founded 

 on observations which the microscope had for the first time rendered 

 possible, had come into existence. Bowman, one of the earliest and most 

 successful cultivators of this new science, called it physiological anatomy,' 

 and justified the title by the very important inferences as to the secreting 

 function of epithelial cells and as to the nature of muscular contraction, 

 which he deduced from his admirable anatomical researches. From struc- 

 ture to function, from microscopical observation to physiological experi- 

 ment, the transition was natural. Anatomy was able to answer some 

 questions, but asked many more. Fifty years ago physiologists had 

 microscopes but had no laboratories. English physiologists — Bowman, 

 Paget, Sharpey — were at the same time anatomists, and in Berlin 

 Johannes Miiller, along with anatomy and physiology, taught compara- 

 tive anatomy and pathology. But soon that specialisation which, how- 

 ever much we may regret its necessity, is an essential concomitant of 

 progress, became more and more inevitable. The structural conditions 

 on which the processes of life depend had become, if not known, at least 

 accessible to investigation ; but very little indeed had been ascertained of 

 the nature of the processes themselves — so little indeed that if at this 

 moment we could blot from the records of physiology the whole of the 

 information which had been acquired, say in 1840, the loss would be diffi- 

 cult to trace — not that the previously known facts were of little value, 

 but because every fact of moment has since been subjected to experi- 

 mental verification. It is for this reason that, without any hesitation, we 

 accord to Miiller and to his successors Briicke, du Bois-Reymond, Helm- 

 holtz, who were his pupils, and Ludwig, in Germany, and to Claude 

 Bernard ^ in France, the title of founders of our science. For it is 



' The first part of the Physiological Anatomy appeared in 1843. It was concluded 

 in 1856. 



- It is worthy of note that these five distinguished men were nearly contempo- 

 raries : Ludwig graduated in 1839, Bernard in 1843, the other three between those 

 dates. Three survive — Helmholtz, Ludwig. du Bois-Eeymond. 



