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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 635 



studies in morphological embryology, in 

 comparative anatomy and in systematic 

 zoology and botany were simply indis- 

 pensable as sources of evidence bearing 

 upon the doctrine of descent, and hence 

 studies ontogenetic and phylogenetic, 

 rather than physiologic, were for the time 

 being enthusiastically and almost exclu- 

 sively pursued. That medical physiology 

 did not suifer a similar total eclipse by 

 morphology, but rather continued to ad- 

 vance (at least in Germany) until in 1881 

 Stanley Hall could describe it as " 'The' 

 German Science, ' ' was obviously because of 

 its technical importance to medicine. That 

 it flourished in Germany and not in Eng- 

 land was doubtless due partly to the per- 

 sisting influence of Johannes Miiller 's great 

 work and partly to the fact that the strug- 

 gles over Darwinism were severest and most 

 distracting on English soil. 



Whatever the reason, it had somehow 

 come to pass that in the eighties there 

 was nowhere any physiology to speak of 

 outside the medical schools (while that 

 inside these schools was often of the 

 poorest) and that my own generation grew 

 up almost totally ignorant of general and 

 comparative physiology. If the reason, as 

 seems likely, was the rise and all-embra- 

 cing influence of Darwinism we may perhaps 

 be pardoned if Verworn 's innocent remark, 

 that the doctrine of descent has not thus 

 far 'been fruitful in physiology' seems to 

 some of us so far within the truth as not 

 to touch it. But at last, when, after 

 nearly forty years, descriptive embryology 

 and the phylogeny of animals and plants 

 had been well worked out, and when even 

 the noise of the great struggle over the 

 origin of species had mostly died away, op- 

 portunity came for that remarkable ex- 

 pansion of physiology which we are now 

 witnessing and which, if I am right, is not 

 merely an expansion, but a renascence. It 

 is a renascence, however, not like the great 



period of that name in history, preceded 

 by a dark or middle age in general knowl- 

 edge, for between 1854 and 1894 a splendid 

 development of all other sciences had taken 

 place, theological bonds had been broken, 

 and the freedom of speech and of research 

 enlarged and strengthened. Chemistry 

 and physics had wonderfully expanded 

 and developed and were ready to shed new 

 light upon physiological processes, so that 

 we might say once more, and may to-day 

 repeat with renewed confidence, what 

 George Henry Lewes said before the eclipse 

 — "The hope of science at the present day 

 is to express all phenomena in terms of 

 dynamics. ' ' 



As for the importance of the re- 

 vival and of the recent expansion of 

 physiology for biology, making of the 

 latter once more that rounded whole— 

 totus teres atque rotundus—whidh it ought 

 to be, it is difficult to exaggerate. If, as 

 we believe, biology is only the chemistry 

 and physics of living matter, and if our 

 hope 'is to express all phenomena in terms 

 of dynamics,' we cannot but rejoice that 

 having accumulated within the last fifty 

 years a vast and precious store of mor- 

 phological material we may now pass on to 

 the investigations of questions of the rela- 

 tion, causation and coordination of activi- 

 ties; of processes rather than homologies, 

 of behavior rather than form, of mechan- 

 ism rather than framework. I am in- 

 formed by an excellent authority that a 

 similar tendency is apparent in medicine 

 itself, and that to-day the processes rather 

 than the results of disease occupy the 

 center of interest in pathology. 



Clerk Maxwell long ago remarked con- 

 cerning biology, that "sciences of this kind 

 are rich in facts, and will be well occupied 

 for ages to come in the coordination of 

 these facts. ' ' Surely it is a matter for re- 

 joicing that physiology is to-day dealing 

 with a wider range of facts than ever be- 



