164 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



method in physiological investigation. Unless we deliberately study the 

 normal organism in its entirety I do not see how we can gain any adequate 

 conception about what is really implied by life, but once we have begun 

 to gain that conception we can employ the methods of detailed analysis 

 about which I have spoken earlier with hope of real success. There has 

 been a tendency of late to differentiate the subject of bio-chemistry from 

 physiology, but this distinction, though it may have the merit of 

 administrative convenience, can have no real justification if the ultimate 

 aim of the physiologist and bio-chemist is, as I suppose, the same, namely, 

 the investigation of the nature of living processes. Physiology and bio- 

 chemistry in fact merge into one another, and if we call to our aid the re- 

 sources of chemistry and physics that need not imply that we are any the 

 less physiologists, but we have to be on our guard that we do not by 

 imperceptible degrees turn from the path of biology into that of pure 

 chemistry and, in so doing, miss the goal that we set out to attain. If an 

 example is needed of the application of chemical and physical methods of 

 investigation to the normal living organism, I would point to the work that 

 has been done on human physiology, for it seems to me that a just claim 

 may be made that in that there is represented at least one aspect of true 

 chemical physiology. 



I have now tried to show you something of the part that has already 

 been played by human physiology in the study of the phenomena 

 associated with life, and I want to turn to a different aspect with a view 

 to urging a wider extension of the study of this branch of physiology. In 

 our enthusiasm for research we are apt to overlook the fact that unless our 

 teaching can keep pace with our research the general advance of learning 

 must be seriously impeded. Age must give place to youth, and we must 

 do our best to hand on to those who will succeed us the knowledge which 

 we have inherited and to which we have added in our own generation, so 

 that they may be able to go forward from the point where we are obliged 

 to leave off. 



I cannot help feeling that our teaching of physiology would be more 

 satisfactory if human physiology occupied a more prominent position. 

 I am not thinking so much in this connection of advanced teaching, for 

 the number of students who take advanced courses is relatively small and 

 it is fairly easy to arrange suitable work for limited numbers. The great 

 majority of students who take up the study of physiology do so as a 

 preliminary to a medical career, and but few of them in the end pass on to 

 advanced courses, and it is of the elementary teaching of physiology 

 required as a preliminary to the study of clinical medicine, or an antecedent 

 to more advanced honours courses, that I wish to speak. 



So far as the theoretical side of physiology is concerned, books enough 

 and to spare are available ; and if the student is dissatisfied with his text 

 book or his teachers he can turn, unless he is appalled at the prospect, to 

 the ever-increasing number of monographs, reviews and special volumes 

 which offer to him information on almost every conceivable branch, 

 however obscure, of physiology. It is, I think, the practical instruction 

 in physiology with which we may legitimately find fault. We are, I 

 suppose, in part tied by tradition, in part handicapped in our laboratories 

 by the accumulation of apparatus of bygone days, and it is easy to point 



