Makch 1, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



337 



fore. It is no longer confined within medi- 

 cal schools, in which mammalian, or at least 

 vertebrate, facts must always be of para- 

 mount importance, for, as has been shown 

 above, zoologists and botanists in our uni- 

 versities and colleges are turning their 

 attention to the behavior and activities of 

 the lower forms of life, both plant and 

 animal. It is, however, unfortunate that 

 the beginner still generally finds no physi- 

 ology, under that name, offered in our 

 higher institutions of learning outside the 

 medical schools, in which physiology is 

 necessarily, and rightly enough, influenced 

 to a great degree by the needs of technical 

 students, since— as Huxley said long ago — 

 "a medical school is a technical school: 

 a school in which a practical profession is 

 taught." For while physiologists have 

 abundantly demonstrated that pure science 

 may thrive in a technical atmosphere, still, 

 it must always be true that in a technical 

 school the applications of science will be 

 most in demand, and hence most influ- 

 ential. Instead of reproving medical phys- 

 iologists for their failure to cover the 

 whole field we ought, however, to be grate- 

 ful to them for having stuck to their guns 

 so devotedly after all other physiologists, 

 both general and comparative, had de- 

 serted the field and followed after mor- 

 phological gods, such as embryology, 

 homology and phylogeny. At last, how- 

 ever, the zoologists and botanists are re- 

 turning to their own and taking up their 

 old work. It is greatly to be hoped that 

 some of these may eventually come to 

 acknowledge themselves physiologists, and 

 that, very soon, students of biology in 

 our higher institutions of learning, whether 

 zoologists or botanists, may have of- 

 fered to them equal opportunities in gen- 

 eral or comparative morphology and gen- 

 eral or comparative physiology. (An ex- 

 cellent resume of present tendencies may 

 be found in the various addresses in Vol. 



v., Congress of Arts and Science, Uni- 

 versal Exposition. St. Louis, 1906.) 



Meantime, what is most important is to 

 realize that physiology is still and always 

 will be one of the two grand divisions of 

 biology; that it offers, to-day, especially in 

 its general and its comparative divisions, 

 a field white for the harvest and — what 

 makes it still more inviting— one mostly 

 unworked since the publication of the 

 origin of species. When we realize these 

 facts and also what a wealth of new knowl- 

 edge the progress of other sciences such as 

 chemistry and physics has placed at our 

 disposal since 1860, it is clear that to gen- 

 eral physiology we may probably look in 

 the immediate future for the greatest ad- 

 vances in biology. "We have already got 

 from medical physiologists the broad out- 

 lines of the physiology of animal organs 

 and from plant physiologists of the or- 

 gans of plants; we are getting from the 

 experimental zoologists— and particularly 

 the embryologists and cytologists— the 

 physiology of animal cells— including vari- 

 ous protoplasms. Our next great advance 

 must come in the physiology of organisms 

 as wholes, and that not merely of the lower 

 organisms, but of the higher also. In this 

 direction studies on nutrition are already 

 beginning to tell, and epidemiology has 

 much to teach. When climatology — a sci- 

 ence of rare possibilities— and the numer- 

 ous divisions of public hygiene shall have 

 'coordinated their facts,' we shall have at 

 least the groundwork of a complete physi- 

 ology of the higher organisms. 



The discussion which is to follow— a dis- 

 cussion possible indeed only after mor- 

 phology had cleared the way— should 

 afford in a consideration of the actions and 

 reactions between parasitic protozoa and 

 mankind, an excellent example of the 

 broader general physiology of to-day and 

 to-morrow. William T. Sedgwick 



Massachusetts Institute 

 or Technologt 



