130 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
‘due to the efforts of the half-century just closing; that is probably 
the personal conviction of us all. Yet we may still believe that through 
all the history of mankind recognition will be given and honour be ~ 
paid to the steps in knowledge which were made first and made securely 
in the period we now review. The men who have done this work 
will not take pride in it for themselves; they know that their strength 
has not been their own, but that of the beauty which attracted them, 
and of the discipline which they obeyed. They count themselves happy 
to have found their favoured path. Other and more acute minds might 
have usurped their places and found greater happiness for themselves 
if, under a social ordering of another kind, they had been turned to 
the increase of knowledge instead of to the ephemeral, barren, or © 
insoluble problems of convention and competition. By how much the 
realised progress towards truth and the power brought by truth might | 
have been increased under a changed social organisation we can never 
know, nor can we guess what acceleration the future may bring to 
it if more of the best minds are set free within the State for work 
of this highest kind, what riches may be added to intellectual life, or 
what fuller service may be given to the practical affairs of man and 
to the merciful work of medicine. 
TT; 
To the story of progress which has just been sketched in outline 
the War brought inevitable interruption and change. To the more 
obvious disturbances and wastage of war I need not here refer, but 
I would point to some influences of that time which will be found, I 
think, to have left permanent effects, and on the whole good effects, 
upon the position and tendencies of physiology. Before 1914 physiology 
was being developed, as we have seen, in its still youthful status as 
one of the primary departments of knowledge; it had become a subject 
of independent university rank. Large and important parts of this 
development had proceeded at one or other of the ancient universities, 
out of touch with great centres of population, and out of touch, there- 
fore, with immediate medical needs. In some degree this was not 
without advantage, and for two main reasons. Detachment from the 
pressure of need allowed the free pursuit of knowledge for its own 
sake and a full surrender to the hintings of Nature, wherever her clues 
might lead the inquirer. Experience amply showed, moreover, that 
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when physiology was presented among other university subjects for — 
study it gained, first as recruits and later as distinguished workers, 
many able young men who were attracted to it, often from other — 
subjects, by the fascinations of its problems, and without regard to — 
any of its potential applications to medical or any other practical ends. 
These were great gains which it would be easy, if it were not unneces- — 
sary, to illustrate by many convincing examples. Yet there were some ~ 
heavy counterweights on the other side of the balance. The practical — 
and urgent needs of humanity as found at the hospitals were not — 
brought with full or due effect to the notice of physiologists. Those 
in charge of hospital patients were not selected to advance, or habitually 
