January 10, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



51 



pression to those not fully informed of the 

 actual conditions of science. In truth, the 

 boundaries between the divisions and sub- 

 divisions of the sciences are being rapidly 

 effaced by a deeper insight into the nature 

 and phenomena of the material universe. 

 Natural science has been compared to a 

 continent separated into kingdoms, but a 

 more appropriate comparison, it seems to 

 me, is to the spectrum composed of differ- 

 ent rays which merge imperceptibly into 

 each other and combine into one white light 

 with radiant energy to be discovered be- 

 yond the limits of the visible. 



Who will undertake in these days of 

 physical chemistry to separate the domain 

 of the physicist from that of the chemist? 

 The problems of the geologist have long 

 been recog-nized as essentially physical and 

 chemical in their nature. An ever larger 

 part of the biological sciences, including 

 the medical, is opening to exploration and 

 conquest by physical and chemical methods. 

 To mathematics belongs the primacy, for the 

 exactness of a science is in direct ratio to 

 the degree with which its subject-matter 

 can be investigated by measurement and 

 calculation, that is by mathematical meth- 

 ods. The ideal thus implied has been fully 

 attained only by celestial mechanics, but it 

 is approached by some other departments 

 of physics. It is in accord with this ideal 

 that Priestley admirably said that the ob- 

 ject of science is "to comprehend things 

 clearly and to comprise as much knowledge 

 as possible in the smallest compass." The 

 ultimate problems of reality and of 

 knowledge belong to metaphysics which 

 we may, following Descartes, bury deep in 

 the soil as the root of the tree of science. 



While this mutual dependence of all the 

 sciences of nature, so significant of the 

 operation everywhere of common principles 

 and forms of energy and of an underlying 

 uniformity in the order of nature, both 

 animate and inanimate, is closest between 



the physical sciences in the restricted sense, 

 it is strikingly illustrated in the history of 

 the biological sciences, and it has seemed 

 to me that the consideration of certain 

 aspects of the interdependence of that de- 

 partment of biological science with which 

 I am most familiar and the other sciences 

 of nature would be an appropriate theme 

 for an address by a representative of the 

 science of medicine upon this occasion. It 

 is to be understood that under the sciences 

 of nature I include those of inanimate 

 nature, the physical sciences, as well as 

 those of organized beings, and indeed I 

 shall dwell more particularly upon rela- 

 tionships between the medical sciences and 

 physics and chemistry, for the points of 

 contact between the various branches of 

 biological science and medicine are self- 

 evident and more familiar. 



It need hardly be said that any system- 

 atic and full consideration of this broad 

 theme far transcends the limits of an ad- 

 dress and that in selecting particular as- 

 pects of the subject and certain illustra- 

 tions I am quite aware that other points 

 of view and other examples will come to 

 the minds of my hearers as equally, if not 

 more, worthy of presentation. Medicine 

 has derived such inestimable benefits from 

 the physical and natural sciences that I 

 desire to lay some emphasis upon the serv- 

 ices which it has rendered to them. For 

 my present purpose it is not necessary to 

 assign any limits to the operation of phys- 

 ical and chemical laws in living beings, for 

 the most extreme vitalist must leave so 

 large a part of the phenomena of living 

 beings under the subjection of these laws 

 that their application in medical and bio- 

 logical studies must always be of the high- 

 est importance. 



An historical sketch, necessarily brief 

 and inadequate, of some of the principal 

 phases in the reciprocal relations between 

 medicine and the physical sciences, up to 



