18 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 470. 



in botanical work generally throughout the 

 country. To accomplish this, it is realized 

 that the aid and cooperation of all other 

 botanical societies should be secured. No 

 question is raised as to the value and neces- 

 sity of other botanical organizations. We 

 do not believe that there are too many of 

 them, but that there is a woeful lack of 

 proper unification and coordination was 

 shown at the last Washington meeting, 

 where the number of papers presented was 

 so great that it was impossible for visiting 

 botanists to take anything like advantage 

 of them. In the future it is hoped and 

 believed that existing botanical organiza- 

 tions can be continued and their integrity 

 and independence maintained, but at the 

 same time it would seem highly important 

 that some steps be taken toward unification. 

 There would seem no reason why the Botan- 

 ical Society of America should not be the 

 medium for bringing this about, and why, 

 through its efforts, there should not be ef- 

 fected an organization representing the 

 various botanical societies throughout the 

 country which would affiliate with this 

 society and assist in shaping a general 

 policy on all matters affecting the welfare 

 of the science. 



The time seems ripe for bringing about 

 this result. Never was botany more pros- 

 perous, never more aggressive. On the 

 threshold of the twentieth century we 

 stand, knowing our strength and only need- 

 ing to weld it into harmonious action to 

 make it vital and lasting. Let us join 

 hands and do our best to bring this about. 

 Beverly T. Galloway. 



VITALISM AND MECHANISM IN BIOLOGY 

 AND MEDICINE.* 

 Until some sixty years ago the prevalent 

 view was that nearly all life phenomena 



* Introductory remarks made at the D. W. 

 Harrington lectures on ' CEdema, a Consideration 

 of the Physiological and Pathological Factors 

 Concerned in its Formation,' delivered at the 

 University of Buffalo, November 30, December 1, 

 2 and 3, 1903. 



were guided essentially by an all-pervad- 

 ing vital force. Even after the discovery 

 by Wohler in 1828 of the possibility of pro- 

 ducing synthetically such an organic sub- 

 stance as urea, such a universal mind as 

 that of Johannes Miiller was still clinging 

 to the belief in the all-powerful force as 

 the creator and harmonizer of the various 

 mechanisms of the living body. The be- 

 lief in the omnipresence of an all-creating 

 vital force furnished little stimulus for 

 laborious studies of the innumerable mech- 

 anisms of life. In the forties of the last 

 century, however, there came a change. 

 With the improvement of the methods of 

 investigation, with the rapid progress in 

 organic chemistry, with the establishment 

 of the law of conservation of energy in 

 physics, with the successful application of 

 physical and chemical laws to some of the 

 intricate problems of life, the conviction 

 developed that a great many of the mys- 

 teries of life will resolve themselves into 

 physics and chemistry, and this belief grad- 

 ually grew in some quarters into a theory 

 that all life phenomena are nothing else 

 but complex phenomena of the inorganic 

 world. As just in those days it was recog- 

 nized in physics that all energies can be 

 converted into motion, and that the me- 

 chanical energy is the essential principle in 

 the inorganic world, the new theory which 

 made no distinction between the animate 

 and inanimate phenomena became known 

 as the mechanical theory of life. Right 

 or wrong, this theory was of incalculable 

 benefit to the progress of the biological 

 sciences. The conviction that all parts of 

 life are accessible to an analysis by the 

 methods employed in natural science, stim- 

 ulated then and stimulates now thousands 

 of patient investigators in their indefati- 

 gable attempts to unravel an infinitely 

 small fraction of the mysteries of life. Vi- 

 talism had a paralyzing effect. The me- 

 chanical conception of the life phenomena 



