SECTION I.—PHYSIOLOGY. 
ADDRESS TO THE PHYSIOLOGIGAL 
SECTION, 
INTRODUCING A DISCUSSION ON THE BroLocicaL NATURE OF 
THE VIRUSES. 
BY 
H. H. DALE, C.B.E., M.D., D.Se., F.R.C.P., Sec.R.58., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
I HAVE counted it a very high honour to be called to preside over this 
Section at the Centenary meeting of the British Association. In the 
earlier history of the Association’s meetings the Section, and its subject, 
seem to have had a precarious independence. At the original meeting in 
1831, sub-committees were formed to deal with particular branches of 
knowledge, but physiology was not among them. In 1832 the com- 
mittee dealing with zoology and botany took physiology and anatomy 
under its charge. Anatomy and physiology attained the dignity of a 
separate section in 1834, and this took the title and scope of a section of 
medical science from 1836 to 1844. It kept its separate existence, as a 
section of Physiology, for three years more, was then re-absorbed for no 
less than forty-six years into the section of Biology, emerging again into 
independence with its present title in 1893, since which date it has changed 
in form only by budding off a daughter-section of Psychology. 
Addressing a section with a history of such varying affiliations and 
fluctuating boundaries, I need hardly apologise for taking a wide view of 
its scope and its interests. When the British Association first recognised 
its existence, in the year before Johannes Miiller began his tenure of the 
Chair of Physiology in Berlin, Physiology had become an almost stationary 
science. It had been dependent for its progress for some centuries before 
that date on the occasional and rare emergence of a William Harvey, a 
John Mayow, a Stephen Hales, ora Lavoisier. Since that date, Physiology, 
the science of the process of life, has been reborn, as a body of knowledge 
progressing continuously by experiment. In such a progress it was 
inevitable that new fields of investigation should be opened, each pro- 
ducing its own methods and its own organisation of special investigators. 
In 1831, and for many years afterwards, nobody could have foreseen the 
sudden rise of a new science of Bacteriology, or the later development of 
Biochemistry as a separate discipline. Hither of these could probably 
to-day lay claim to a more numerous body of investigators, and a greater 
output of new observation, than some departments of scientific activity 
which have obtained separate sectional representation. Yet I think it 
is a matter for congratulation, rather than regret, that, in the meetings 
of the British Association, the section of Physiology should still remain 
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