4B8 KECENT PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 



slender oat on wliicU to pipe a presidential address, I have hoped that 

 I might be led to sound upon it some few notes which might be 

 listened to. 



And, indeed — though perhaps when we come to look into it closely 

 almost every period would seem to have a value of its own — the past 

 thirteen years do, in a certain sense, mark a break between the physi- 

 ology of the past and that of the future. When the association met at 

 Montreal in 1884, Darwin, whose pregnant ideas have swayed iDhysi- 

 ology in the limited sense of that word, as well as that broader study 

 of living beings which we sometimes call biology, as indeed they have 

 every branch of natural knowledge, had been taken from us only some 

 two years before, and there were still alive most of the men who did 

 the great works of physiology of the middle and latter half of this cen- 

 tury. The gifted Claude Bernard had passed away some years before, 

 but his peers might have been present at Montreal. Bowman, whose 

 classic works ou nuiscle and kidney stand out as peaks in the physio- 

 logical landscape of the past, models of researches finished and com- 

 plete so far as the opportunities of the time would allow, fruitful 

 beginnings and admirable guides for the labors of others. Brown- 

 Sequard, who shares with Bernard the glory of having oj)ened up the 

 great modern i^ath of the influence of the nervous system on vascular, 

 and thus on nutritional, events, and who, if he made some mistakes, 

 did many things which will last for all time. Briicke, whose clear judg- 

 ment, as shown in his digestive and other work, gave permanent value 

 to whatever he put forth. Du Bois Eeymond, who, if he labored in a 

 narrow path, set a brilliant example of the way in which exact x^hysical 

 analysis may be applied to the phenomena of living beings, and in other 

 ways had a x)oworful influence on the progress of i)hysiology. Donders, 

 whose mind seemed to have caught something of the better qualities of 

 the physiological organ to which his professional life was devoted, and 

 our knowledge of which he so largely extended, so sharply did he focus 

 his mental eye on every physiological iiroblem to which he turned — and 

 these were many and varied. Helmholtz, whose great works on visi»m 

 and hearing, to say nothing of his earlier distinctly physiological 

 researches, make us feel that if physics gained much, physiology lost 

 even more when the physiologist turned aside to more distinctly 

 physical inquiries. Lastly, and not least, Ludwig, who by his own 

 hands or through his pupils did so much to make physiology the exact 

 science which it is to-day, but which it was not when he began his 

 work. I say lastly, but I might add the name of one who, though 

 barred by circumstances from contributing much directly to physiology 

 by way of research, so used his powerful influence in many ways in aid 

 of physiological interests as to have helped the science onward to no 

 mean extent, at least among English-speaking peox)le — I mean Huxley. 

 All these might have met at Montreal. They have all left us now. 

 Among the peers of the men I have mentioned whose chief labors were 



