442 RECENT PROGRESS IN PHYSIOLOGY. 



only tlie few wbo liad a real call cared to tread it. Nowadays there is 

 some fear lest it become so broad aud so easy as to tempt those who 

 are in no way fitted for it. There is an increasing risk oi men under- 

 taking a research, not because a question is crying out to them to be 

 answered, but in the hope tliat the publication of their results may 

 win for them a lucrative post. There is, moreover, an even greater 

 evil ahead. The man who lights on a new scientific method holds the 

 key of a chamber in which much gold may be stored up, and strong- 

 is the temptation for him to keep the new knowledge to himself until 

 he has filled his fill, while all the time his brother inquirers are wan- 

 dering about in the dark through lack of that which he possesses. 

 Such a selfish withholding of new scientific truth is beginning to be 

 not rare in some branches of knowledge. May it never come near us! 



IS^ow I will, with your permission, cease to sound the provincial note, 

 and ask your attention for a few minutes while I attempt to dwell on 

 what seem to me to be some of the salient features of the fruits of 

 physiological activity, not among English-speaking people only, but 

 among all folk, during the x)ast thirteen years. 



When we review the records of research and discovery over any 

 lengthened period we find that in every branch of the study j)rogress 

 is irregular; that it ebbs and flows. At one time a particular problem 

 occupies much attention; the periodicals are full of memoirs about it, 

 and many of the young bloods fiesh their maiden swords upon it. Then 

 again, for a while it seems to lie dormant and unheeded. But quite 

 irrespective of this feature, which seems to belong to all lines of 

 inquiry, we may recognize two kinds of progress. On the one hand, 

 in such a period, in spite of the waves just mentioned, a steady 

 advance continually goes on in researches which were begun and 

 l^ushed forward in former periods, some of them being of very old 

 date. On the other hand, new lines of investigation, starting with 

 quite ]iew ideas or rendered possible by the introduction of new 

 methods, are or may be begun. Such naturally attract great attention 

 and give a special character to the period. 



In the past thirteen years we may recognize both these kinds of 

 progress. Of tlie former kind I might take, as an example, the time- 

 honored problems of the mechanics of the circulation. In spite of the 

 labor which has been spent on these in times of old, something always 

 remains to be done, and the last thirteen years have not been idle. 

 The researches of Hiirthle and Tigerstedt, of Koy and Adami, not to 

 mention others, have left us wiser than we were before. So, again, 

 with the also old problems of muscular contraction, progress, if not 

 exciting, has been real; we are some steps measurably nearer an 

 understanding what is the exact nature of the fundamental changes 

 which bring about contraction and what are the relations of those 

 changes to the structure of muscular fiber. In respect to another old 

 problem, too, the beat of the heart, we have continued to creep nearer 



