166 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



human physiology ; and a more convincing introduction to those quanti- 

 tative conceptions which must form the basis of physiology, as of other 

 branches of natural science, can be gained, I think, in this way than by, 

 say, a few quantitative bio-chemical analyses which, essential though they 

 may be in themselves, can hardly be more than exercises in method in 

 the early days of a student's career. 



These students are for the most part going to follow the profession of 

 medicine, and in the short time available our aim must be to develop their 

 powers of thought and initiative that they may be the better equipped to 

 face the future when they go out into the world ; and if they leave us with 

 only the recollection of a medley of seemingly disconnected facts, it is 

 quite intelligible that they may fail to grasp what physiology really means, 

 and that a gulf, for which there can be no justification, will deepen between 

 physiology and medicine. Physiology is not medicine : the physician 

 sees a side of life which the physiologist does not meet in the cold aloofness 

 of the laboratory. The art of medicine is not based merely on the applica- 

 tion of skilled technique ; it demands in addition a full and sympathetic 

 comprehension of human nature with all its hopes and fears, its frailty 

 and courage. And yet the more the physiologist can find out about the 

 characteristics of normal life the greater will be his service to medicine, 

 for a knowledge of the normal cannot but help us to estimate with greater 

 certainty the influence of the abnormal, and the underlying principles of 

 adaptation of organ activity which we as physiologists recognize in the 

 functional changes which exhibit themselves in everyday life, and in the 

 reactions to alterations of environment, have their counterpart in medicine 

 in the natural efforts at compensation for the effects of injury or disease, 

 a compensation which it must be the aim of the physician to encourage 

 and assist. 



And there is another field in which scope may be found for human 

 physiology. In the growing complexity of the modern world the improve- 

 ment of the general standard of life is a matter which appeals to all of us. 

 Physiologists have already played a prominent part in investigations into 

 the means by which conditions may be improved and risk reduced in 

 industrial processes, into the factors which affect the efficiency and welfare 

 of the working classes, and into the influence of diet on health. Problems 

 such as these, whose solution is of direct benefit to the community at 

 large, call for the practical application of physiological principles. We 

 ought not to regard applied physiology as something distinct, as something 

 to be divorced from the more academic study of theoretical physiology ; 

 it should be looked upon as the natural extension of our researches in the 

 laboratory. These practical problems in their turn often suggest new lines 

 of inquiry, new methods of approach, by which the science of physiology 

 may be still further advanced. 



The horizon stretching before the physiologist is a wide one, and, no 

 matter whether he intends to adopt an academic career in pure physiology 

 or to follow the path which leads on to medicine or to hygiene in its broadest 

 sense, I am convinced that a study of human physiology will introduce 

 him to some of the fundamental facts of life, and by giving him a guiding 

 line of thought will help him to make his way through a maze of minutiae 

 and speculations in which he might otherwise get overwhelmed. 



