440 RECENT PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 



aspiratious of the uatiou, possessed a chair of physiology. The i>reseiit 

 professors, who are the first, were both ai)pointed in 1883. Uii to that 

 time the science of physiology had not been deemed worthy, by either 

 university, of a distinctive professorial mechanism. The act of these 

 ancient institutions Avas only a manifestation of modern impulses, 

 shared also by the metropolis and by the provinces at large. Whereas 

 uj) to that time the posts for teaching physiology, by whatever name 

 they were called, had been in most cases held by men whose intellectual 

 ioins were girded for other i)urposes than physiology, and who used the 

 posts as stepping stones for what they considered better things, since 

 that time, as each post became vacant, it has almost invariably been 

 filled by men wishing and purposing at lenst to devote their whole 

 energies to the science. Scotland, in many respects the forerunner of 

 England in intellectual matters, had not so much need of change; but 

 she, too, has moved in the same direction, as has also the sister island. 



And if we turn to this Western Continent we find in Canada and in 

 the States the same notable enlargement of physiological opportunity, 

 or even a still more notable one. If the English-speaking physiologist 

 dots on the map each place on this Western Hemisphere which is an 

 academic focus of his science, he may well be proud of the opportuni- 

 ties now aiforded for the development of English ])hysiology5 and the 

 greater x^art of this has come within the last thirteen years. 



Professorial chairs or their analogues are, however, after all but a 

 small part of the provision for the development of i)hysiological science. 

 The heart of physiology is the laboratory. It is this which sends the 

 life blood through the frame, and in respect to this, perhaps, more than 

 to anything else, has the progress of the i)ast thirteen years been strik- 

 ing. Doubtless on both sides of the Avaters there were physiological 

 laboratories, and good ones, in 1884; but how much have even these 

 during that period been enlarged and imin^oved, and how many new 

 ones have been added? In how many places, even right up to about 

 1884, the professor or lecturer was fain to be content with mere lecture 

 experiments and a simple course of histology, with perhaps a few chem- 

 ical exercises for his students. Now each teacher, however modest his 

 post, feels and says that the authorities under whom he works are 

 bound to provide him Avith the means of leading his students along the 

 only ])ath by which the science can be truly entered upon — that by Avhich 

 each learner repeats for himself the fundamental observations on which 

 the science is based. 



But there is a still larger outcome from the professorial chair and the 

 X)hysiological laboratory than the training of the student. These are 

 opportunities not for teaching only, but also for research. And per- 

 haps in no respect has the develoi)ment during the past thirteen years 

 been so marked as in this. Never so clearly as during this period has 

 it become recognized that each post for teaching is no less a post for 

 learning, that among academic duties the making knowledge is as 



