162 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



been collected iniglit become valuable if only the fundamental question 

 as to the reality of the structures described could be settled. 



At the present time some English schools have followed the American 

 and Continental practice, and handed histology over to anatomy, and 

 though I am personally not at all convinced of the justification of this 

 step, yet in view of the indications of quickening in the subject of anatomy 

 during the past two decades, it no doubt is best to suspend judgment as 

 to the ultimate result of the transfer. The portents of the approach of 

 a more live and scientific type of anatomy, of an anatomy of a kind far 

 more useful to physiology and to medicine, are many. The study of the 

 relations of organs in the living body, of the functional significance of 

 structure, the newer experimental histology, as typified by studies with 

 ultra-violet illumination, ultra-microscopy, micro-dissection of live cells, 

 tissue culture, micro-chemistry and the remarkable development of 

 experimental embryology, bring to the physiologist joy and hope, and the 

 conviction that the artificial line of demarcation between anatomy and 

 physiology will happily soon be a thing of the past. 



The relations of anatomy and physiology to pathology are, or should 

 be, as close as those with each other. When the separation of 

 physiology from anatomy took place many methods and problems which 

 rightly belonged to pathology went with it — such problems of nutrition 

 as inanition, rickets, diabetes, ketosis and acidosis, or jaundice, and of 

 the circulation as heart-block, fibrillation, and so forth. These and many 

 other problems were studied in the physiological laboratory by methods 

 which physiology had come jealously to claim as its own ; the dead study 

 of anatomy led to a pathology of the dead in preference to that of the 

 living, and the euphemism so common in the wards ' when this case 

 comes to the pathologist,' meaning ' when this patient is dead,' is significant 

 of this state of affairs. Yet it must be quite apparent that pathology and 

 medical science can only take as their starting-point the study of the 

 normal individual as presented by physiology. 



Instead of this, the experimental side of pathology has up to the 

 present been almost entirely directed to the study of bacteriology, which, 

 though well enough in its way, is too narrow and superficial, because it 

 gives insufficient information as to the relation between bacteria, their 

 products and the tissue cells on which either infection or immunity can 

 be explained. Now that the subject of physiology is so far advanced, 

 the time is ripe, if not overdue, I think, for the pathologist to come into 

 his own, and for the subject of experimental pathology, with ramifications 

 similar to those of physiology, to attract some of the best brains in the 

 world of biological workers. And, if the knowledge of service rendered 

 to their fellows be regarded as payment, they will be well paid. 



The subject of psychology was until recently included at the British 

 Association as a sub-section of physiology. As a science psychology must 

 always retain the closest links with physiology, and I think that in the 

 future these links will be strengthened rather than weakened. The 

 researches of Pavlov on the conditioned reflexes will undoubtedly 

 revolutionise the study of physiological psychology, and I need offer no 

 further comment on their scientific excellence, or on the general approval 

 they have won, beyond reminding you that they have already been con- 

 demned by Mr. Bernard Shaw. 



