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SCIENCE 



[Vol. LV, No. 1430 



for the wonderful and secret operations of 

 Nature are so involved and intricate, so far out 

 of the reach of our senses . . ."; and it was 

 not then or till much later that many heads 

 and hands were ready to be employed. Neither 

 of these men had effective influence upon the 

 thought or practical affairs of their day, either 

 within the universities or outside them. 



Physiology, as we know it now in this coun- 

 try, took its shape in a new revival which may 

 be reckoned as beginning half a century ago. 

 All our chief schools may be said to derive 

 their lineage from that new home of active and 

 unshackled inquiry — I mean University College, 

 in Gower Street, London — and from the influ- 

 ence there of an Edinburgh graduate, William 

 Sharpey, who at the age of thirty-four was 

 taken from the Edinburgh school to be pro- 

 fessor of anatomy and physiology. Here, from 

 1836 to 1874,- Sharpey was inspiring a group 

 of younger minds with his eager outlook. 

 Already in France the new experimental study 

 of the living functions was being established 

 by Claude Bernard — that true "father in our 

 common science," as Foster later called him; 

 already in Leipzig Ludwig, transmitting the 

 impulse of Miiller's earlier labors, had founded 

 that school of physiology which moulded the 

 development of the . subject in Germany and 

 other countries, and had very strong early 

 influence upon several of those who were later 

 to become leaders with us. England had lost 

 the pre-eminence that Stuart kings at all events 

 had valued and promoted. Learning had be- 

 come identified in English society with the 

 mimetic use of the dead languages, and prog- 

 ress at the two universities — even at the Cam- 

 bridge of Newton, where mathematics kept 

 independence of thought alive — was still im- 

 peded by the grip of ecclesiastical tradition 

 and by sectarian privilege. But at University 

 College learning had been unfettered. Here 

 Sharpey and his colleagues were in touch with 

 the best progress in France and Germany, and 

 here the organized study of physiology as a 

 true branch of university study may be said to 

 have begun. Its formal separation from 

 anatomy came later and irregularly; a separate 

 chair of physiology was not created at Univer- 

 sity College until 1874, nor at Cambridge or 

 at Oxford until 1883. 



We ought in piety to recognize that this 

 tardy reflection of continental progress in our 

 own subject, like parallel movements in other 

 subjects, had in its early stages received inval- 

 uable aid from the Prince Consort, who, 

 familiar with the progress of other countries, 

 had lent his influence and sympathy to many 

 men of science in their struggle against the 

 insularity and apathy of the wealthy and gov- 

 erning classes of the earlier Victorian days. 

 The curious may take note that the flrst out- 

 ward mark of recognition given by the official 

 and influential world to the existence of physi- 

 ology as such was given not, as in other and 

 poorer countries much earlier, by the endow- 

 ment of some chair or institute for research and 

 teaching, but by an act of symbolic representa- 

 tion. For, when the expensive statuary of the 

 Albert Memorial was completed in 1871, it was 

 found that "Physiology," ■ betokened by a 

 female figure with a microscope, had been given 

 its place among the primary divisions of learn- 

 ing and investigation acknowledged in that 

 monument to the Prince. 



From Sharpey himself and his personal 

 infiuence we may trace directly onwards the 

 development of all the chief British schools of 

 physiology whose achievements have in the 

 past half -century restored Britain to more than 

 her old pride of place in this form of service 

 to mankind. We here fittingly acknowledge 

 first the close link with Sharpey which we find 

 here to-day in Sir Edward Sharpey Schafer, 

 who, after fruitful years in his old teacher's 

 place at University College, brought that per- 

 sonal tradition back to this great school of 

 Edinburgh from whence it originally came. At 

 University College itself the line has been con- 

 tinued with undimmed lustre by Starling and 

 Bayliss and their colleagues to the present day. 

 From Sharpey's school again are derived the 

 great branches which have sprung from it, both 

 at Oxford and at Cambridge. Burdon Sander- 

 son, Sharpey's immediate successor at Univer- 

 sity College, proceeded thence to Oxford and 

 founded there, against many difiiculties of 

 prejudice and custom, the school of physiology 

 wliich Gotch, Haldane, and Sherrington have 

 nevertheless maintained so brilliantly in suc- 

 ceeding years. To Cambridge, Michael Foster, 

 one of Sharjiey's demonstrators, was invited 



