I.— PHYSIOLOGY. 161 



In fact, I am convinced that within the limits of administrative possibility 

 the greater the variety of workers brought together the better the 

 resxilts. 



So much for the exact sciences. Their value to physiology is immense. 

 They help us to interpret phenomena, but not to predict. In a word 

 physiology is something more than biochemistry and biophysics ; it is, 

 and will always remain, a biological subject. 



As its nearest neighbour among the biological sciences, zoology should 

 have the closest relations with physiology, yet it is curious that during 

 several decades, for reasons which need not now be discussed, these two 

 subjects were as the poles apart. The newly disinterred subject of com- 

 parative physiology, however, bears witness to a returning interest of 

 zoologists in the experimental study of function as against mere morpho- 

 logical classification, as well as of physiologists in comparative function 

 as a valuable means of throwing light on their own special problems. For 

 there can surely be no more fruitful means of studying that response to 

 altered conditions which we know as structural adaptation, and which 

 we consider as only a special case of response to a stimulus, than the study 

 by physiological methods of those examples of homology and analogy 

 with which zoological science can so abundantly supply us. 



With the science of botany, except in its most general principles, 

 physiology has a less direct connexion, though here too the demonstration 

 of fundamental points of resemblance in the metabolism of plants and 

 animals, and the fact of the mutual dependence of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms on each other, reminds us that we cannot afford to ignore the 

 physiology of any living thing. Nor, in this connexion, should we forget 

 that many valuable suggestions have arisen from plant physiology — the 

 discovery of the cell, of Brownian movement, of osmotic pressure, and 

 the notion of the storage of food materials, for instance. 



The relation of anatomy to physiology can best be understood if we 

 recall the fact that when the time was ripe physiology separated ofi from 

 anatomy, taking with it all those dynamic problems which concerned 

 function, and leaving anatomy literally little but the dry bones. The 

 stationary condition of anatomy during the last decades of the nineteenth 

 century was similar to that of zoology, and indeed had similar causes, and 

 was little relieved by the subsequent incorporation of anthropology and 

 embryology. Histology had in most countries remained with anatomy, 

 and had for the most part been content, like it, merely to describe the 

 structure of preserved dead things. In Britain, it is true, histology had 

 until quite recently everywhere remained with physiology, and had 

 perhaps fared no better, for although the British, like their Continental 

 friends, did * nothing in particular,' they did not do it very well, for we 

 must admit that histology had degenerated into a merely descriptive 

 subject, supplemented by training in a useful technique, and by the 

 identification of specimens. Nevertheless, there were rays of hope, and 

 occasional hints, as in Bowman's researches on the kidney, Hardy's study 

 of the structure of protoplasm, Langley's investigation of the changes in 

 glands during secretion, or more recently Herring's careful study of the 

 pituitary body, that the problems of function had not been entirely lost 

 sight of, and that the large mass of histological information which had 



1928 M 



