JcxE 13, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



567 



of instructive papers and discussions which 

 have filled these busy days. Some idea of them 

 will have been gatliered from the reports and 

 the articles by our medical correspondent which 

 we have published. But the general trend and 

 spirit of the proceedings are sufficiently illus- 

 trated by the president's opening address. 

 Like Sir Douglas Haig, Sir Clifford Allbutt 

 had no new principles to announce. What he 

 did was to restate with striking force and 

 clearness some old principles, which occasion- 

 ally apiiear to sink out of sight, and to show 

 how they irradiate and iirform whole masses of 

 new facts. He does not hesitate to speak of 

 the present as '' the greatest moment in the 

 history of medicine," or of the revelation to 

 us that medicine has "come to a new birth." 

 But when all is said and done, when all the 

 magnificent examples of discovery and of in- 

 terrelation have been described and arrayed, 

 the widest and the most fundamental conclu- 

 sion readied goes back from generation to 

 generation to Coleridge, to Dante, and the 

 schoolmen, to the greatest of the Greek think- 

 ers. Coleridge insisted upon the interrelation 

 of all knowledge, and invented the term 

 " esemplastic " to describe it. " All things," 

 wrote the great Florentine, " have order be- 

 tween them," and he declares that in this 

 order lies the " form " which makes the uni- 

 verse like to God and in which angels see the 

 impress of His jxjwer. The thought runs 

 through the Divine Comedy, and guides him 

 through the " gran mar doll' essere," as it does 

 his master, Thomas Aquinas. How does it dif- 

 fer from the doctrine laid down by Sir Clif- 

 ford AUbutt, when he teUs us that " as the 

 individual is but a link in the chain, so the 

 human chain is a strand in the web of all liv- 

 ing things." Our work, he says, must be upon 

 the Aristotelian " double track " of the one 

 into the many, and of the many into the one. 

 The principle is old, but the facts which 

 have to be brought under it are overwhelming 

 in their number and in their novelty. The 

 war has added to them enormously, and has 

 suggested complex systems of interrelation 

 unsuspected before, besides affording incon- 

 trovertible proofs of truths seen but dimly 



until now. It is this seemingly endless prog- 

 ress upon lines known and established which 

 makes medicine so fascinating to the scientific 

 imagination. What can be more wonderful 

 than some of the facts mentioned in this ad- 

 dress; what more stimulating than some of 

 the unsolved problems on which it touches? 

 Sir Clifford dwells upon the light which mod- 

 ern physics throws upon medicine. He in- 

 stances the electric methods of taking quanti- 

 tative measurements of mechanical pressures 

 in the circulation of the fluids of the body and 

 in the heart, and he oomes to the conclusion 

 that apparently all biological reactions are de- 

 termined by molecular structure. Above phys- 

 ics comes biology, but " we can not even guess 

 at the links of the chains where physics recedes 

 and biochemistry takes the lead." Merely to 

 glance at the questions presented to us, he de- 

 clares, is to discern " how vast is the realm of 

 knowledge yet iinconquered — nay, undiscov- 

 ered." The tiny cell itself is a microcosm full 

 of intense activities, which are beginning to 

 emerge into the light through the labors of 

 the mathematical physicist, of the spectro- 

 scopist, of the radiologist, and of the physical 

 chemist. How are these new and vast worlds 

 to be explored, and the knowledge of them 

 adapted to the welfare of man? That is the 

 practical problem. The yarn of biochemistry 

 and biology. Sir Clifford says in a fine image, 

 must be continually carried and woven into 

 the web of the practising doctor's art. It is 

 impossible for any man in practise, whatever 

 his abilities and his industry, to perform the 

 work for himself. He can not by his unas- 

 sisted efforts keep pace with the great tide of 

 fresh learning that is sweeping in upon him. 

 There must be some intermediarj' between the 

 working doctor and the men devoted to labora- 

 tory research — some middlemen, some liaison 

 officers to keep them in touch — and the in- 

 vestigator, be it remembered, needs this touch 

 as much as does the practitioner; the bedside 

 and the laboratory must work hand in hand, 

 if either is to derive the fullest fruit from the 

 interrogation of nature. Sir Clifford is clear 

 that in every good clinical school there ought 

 to be a body of whole-time professors with 



