652 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION TI. 
Section I.—PHYSIOLOGY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SEcTION.—F. GowLANp Hopkins, 
M.A., D.Se., F.B.S. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
The Dynamic Side of Biochemistry. 
In the year 1837 Justus Liebig, whom we may rightly name the father of 
modern animal chemistry, presented a Report to the Chemical Section of the 
British Association, then assembled at Liverpool. The technical side of this 
report dealt with the products of the decomposition of uric acid, with which I 
am not at the moment concerned, but ib concluded with remarks which, to judge 
from other contemporary writings of Liebig, would have been more emphatic 
had the nature of his brief communication permitted. Liebig had a profound 
belief that in the then new science of Organic Chemistry, Biology was to find its 
greatest aid to progress, and his enthusiastic mind was fretted by the cooler 
attitude of others. In the report I have mentioned he called upon the chemists 
of this country to take note of what was in the wind, and while complimenting 
British physiologists and biologists upon their own work, urged upon them the 
immediate need of combining with the chemists. Ten years later, Liebig had 
still to write with reference to chemical studies: ‘Der Mann welcher in der 
Thierphysiologie wie Saussure in der Pflanzenphysiologie die ersten und wich- 
tigsten Fragen zur Aufgabe seines Lebens macht, fehlt noch in dieser Wissen- 
schaft.’! Much later still, he was still making the same complaint. As a matter 
of fact, the combination of chemistry with biology, in the full and abundant 
sense that Liebig’s earlier enthusiasm had pictured as so desirable, never hap- 
pened in any country within the limits of his own century, while in this country, 
up to the end of that century, it can hardly be said to have happened at all. 
But the regrettable divorce between these two aspects of science has been so 
often dwelt upon that you will feel no wish to hear it treated historically, and 
perhaps even any emphasis given to it now may seem out of place, since on the 
Continent, and notably in America, the subject of Biochemistry (with its new 
and not very attractive name) has come with great suddenness into its kingdom. 
Even in this country, the recent successful formation of a Biochemical Society 
gives sure evidence of a greatly increased interest in this borderland of science. 
Yet I am going to ask you to listen to some remarks which are a reiteration 
of Liebig’s appeal, as heard by this Association three quarters of a century ago. 
For one can, I think, honestly say that it is yet a rare thing in this country 
to meet a professed biologist, even among those unburdened either with years or 
traditions, who has taken the trouble so to equip himself in organic chemistry 
as to understand fully an important fact of metabolism stated in terms of 
structural formule. The newer science of Physical Chemistry has made a more 
1 Ann. Chem. Pharm. 1xii., 257, 1847. 
