TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 881 
Section I.—PHYSIOLOGY, including ExpertmentaL Patnonocy 
and EXPERIMENTAL PsycHOLOGyY. 
PRESIDENT oF THE Section—J. N. Lanewny, D.Sc., F.R.S. 
The President delivered the following Address on Friday, September 15 :— 
OnE might suppose that Physiology, dealing as it does for the most part with 
structures—such as nerves, and muscles, and glands—which every one has and has 
heard of, would be eminently a science the newer aspects of which every one could 
readily understand. And in this supposition one would be encouraged by the 
frequency of the references in English literature to some part of our inner 
mechanism. More than a century and a quarter ago we find: ‘If ’tis wrote 
against anything, ’tis wrote an’ please your worships against the spleen, in order 
by a more frequent and more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, 
and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive 
the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweetbread of 
his Majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to them, 
down into their duodenums.’ 
It must, however, be recognised that many subjects which are most interesting 
to the physiologist either involve so much special knowledge, or are so beset with 
technical terms, that it is difficult to make clear to others even their general drift. 
IT am not without uneasiness that my subject to-day may be found to fall 
within this category. I propose to consider some relations of the nerves which 
pass from the brain and spinal cord, and convey impulses to the other tissues of the 
body—the motor or efferent nerves; and in especial the relations of those efferent 
nerves which run to the tissues over which we have little or no voluntary control. 
It is as well to say at once that none of the general conclusions which I lay before 
you are encrusted with universal acceptance. One or two have been subjects of 
controversy for the last fifty years; others are too young to have met even with 
contradiction. Ido not propose to give you an account of the various theories 
which have been put forward on the questions I touch upon, nor do I propose to 
point out how far the views I advocate are due to others. I am concerned only 
to state what seems to me to be the most probable view with regard to certain 
problems which have been emerging from obscurity in recent years. 
Limitations in the Control of the Nervous System over the Tissues of the Body.— 
In view of the conspicuous manner in which nervous impulses affect every-day 
life, we are perhaps apt to over-estimate the character and range of the influence 
exercised directly by the nervous system. 
From the early part of this century one way of regarding the body has been 
to consider it as made up of tissues grouped together in varying number and 
amount. Lach tissue has its characteristic features under the microscope. Wea 
need not enter into the question as to which of the commonly recognised tissues 
of the body are to be regarded as forming a class by themselves, and which are to 
1899. 3L 
