L—PHYSIOLOGY. 139 
two subjects, just as, I think, we should look to cytology and the study 
of cell development to offer active points of growing union between 
physiology and the sciences of animal and plant morphology. These and 
other questions of detailed organisation will, I hope, be explored fully 
in the discussion for which we are hoping to-day. With time also 
has come a great development of biochemistry, and this, if only from 
the structural necessities of its laboratory technique, is tending more 
and more to set up house for itself. This, too, is to be a matter for 
fuller discussion presently. We may perhaps hope to see in bio- 
chemistry as it grows not only a common meeting-ground and an un- 
failing source of new inspiration for physiologists and pathologists 
alike, but also a pathway by which organic chemistry may be led towards 
the study of living matter. Few organic chemists in this country, 
though more in America, have been led by that path till now, and yet 
we must believe that biochemistry has perhaps even more to give to 
organic chemistry, as we now know it, than it has to gain. A study of 
organic compounds in a spirit of detachment from the living processes 
which gave them birth must surely lead often to mere virtuosity in the 
laboratory transformations of chemical structure, and I venture very 
timidly to think that many signs point to the near approach of a time 
when organic chemistry will feel the need of fresh inspiration coming 
from the intricate laboratory of the living cell. In a university the 
‘separation of laboratories, which must be guided solely by convenience, 
as convenience is dictated by necessary differences in equipment and 
technique, may be easily transcended by the free communication of 
workers in different branches. Intellectual association and close co- 
“operation, and especially within a university, seem inevitable, as we have 
‘seen, because of the converging approach of diverse workers in common 
reference to the conception of organic unity. There can be no 
boundaries to physiology narrower than the limits of the study of the 
whole organism and the balanced regulation of its living parts. 
I would venture here, however, to point to some dangers by which 
‘the sound development of physiology seems to be threatened, that 
‘spring from its necessarily close association with medical education, 
‘dangers eminent in the present stage of rapid growth in medical studies 
both here and, even more obviously, in America. Historically, 
physiology may be said to have been born of medicine, but it has 
sanctions and strength quite independent of the great services it has 
rendered and has still to render to the material good of mankind through 
Medicine, and, in a less, though in no insignificant degree, to agricul- 
ture. We may recall that chemistry, too, was almost equally born of 
medicine; medicine, at least, was the foster-mother and long the nurse 
of chemistry. Juyon Playfair, in his inaugural address of 1858, in this 
yery place, said, nevertheless, that’ ‘ chemistry in her period of youth, 
full of bloom and promise, was forced into a premature and ill-assorted 
union with medicine.” We can now look back and see that chemistry, 
in becoming free of medicine, and in becoming a great independent 
branch of learning, has, by the fruits of that freedom, repaid to medicine 
a thousandfold her early debts of the nursery. So, too, the history of 
the last half-century, in which physiology has become an independent 
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