RECENT PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 439 



carried ou in the forties, the fifties, and the sixties of the centnry, one 

 prominent inquirer alone seems to be left, Albert von Kolliker, who in 

 his old age is doing work of which even he in his youth might have 

 been proud. The thirteen years which have swept the others away seem 

 to mark a gulf between the i)hysiological world of to-day and that of the 

 time in which most of their work was done. 



They are gone, but they have left behind their work and their names. 

 May they of the future, as I believe we of the i)resent are doing, take 

 up their work and their example, doing work other than theirs but 

 after their pattern, following in their steps. 



In the thirteen years during which these have i)assed away physiology 

 has not been idle. Indeed, the more we look into the period the more 

 it seems to contain. 



The study of physiology, as of other sciences, though it may be stim- 

 ulated by difficulties (and physiology has the stimulus of a special form 

 of opposition unknown to other sciences), expands under the sunshine 

 of opportunity and aid. And it may be worth while to compare the 

 OT)portunities for study of phj^siology in 1884 with those in 1897. At 

 this meeting of the British Association I may fitly confine myself, I was 

 going to say, to British matters; but I feel at this i)oint, as others 

 have felt, the want of a suitable nomenclature. We who are gathered 

 here to-day have, with the exception of a few honored guests from the 

 Eastern Hemisphere, one common bond, one common token of unity, 

 and, so far as I know, one only; I am speaking now otjoutward tokens; 

 down deeper in our nature there are, I trust, yet others. We all speak 

 the English tongue. Some of us belong to what is called Great Britain 

 and Ireland, others to that which is sometimes spoken of as Greater 

 Britain. But there are others here who belong to neither; though 

 English in tongue, they are in no sense British. To myself, to whom 

 the being English in speech is a fact of far deeper moment than any 

 political boundary, and who wish at the present moment to deal with 

 the study of physiology among all those who speak the English tongue, 

 there comes the great want of some word which will denote all such. 

 I hope, indeed I think, that others feel the same want too. The term 

 Anglo-Saxon is at once pedantic and incorrect, and yet there is none 

 other; and, in the absence of such a better term, I shall be forgiven if 

 I venture at times to use the seemingly narrow word English as really 

 meaning something much broader than British in its very broadest 

 sense. 



Using English in this sense, I may, I think, venture to say that the 

 thirteen years which separate 1884 from to day have witnessed among 

 English people a development of opportunities for physiological study 

 such as no other like jjeriod has seen. It is not without significance 

 that only a year or two previous to this period, in, England proper, in 

 little England, neither of the ancient universities of Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge, which, historically at least, rei^resent the fullest academical 



