Recp:nT progress in physIologv. 443 



and nearer to the full liglit. Problems again, the method of attacking 

 which is of more recent origin, such as the nature of secretion and the 

 allied problem of the nature of transudation, have engaged attention 

 aud brought about that stirring of the waters of coutroversy which, 

 whatever be its effects in other departments of life, is never in scieuce 

 wholly a waste of time, if indeed it be a waste of time at all, since in 

 matters of science the tribunal to which the combatants of both sides 

 appeal is always sure to give a true judgment in the end. In the con- 

 troversy thus arisen the last word has perhaps not yet been said, but 

 whether we tend at i)resent to side with Heidenhain, who has continued 

 into the past thirteen years the brilliant labors which were perhaps the 

 distinguishing features of physiological progress in preceding x^eriods, 

 and who in his present sufferings carries with him, I am sure, the sym- 

 pathies if not the hopes of all his brethren, or whether we are more 

 inclined to join those who hold different views, we may all agree in 

 saying that we have, in 1897, distinctly clearer ideas of why secretion 

 gathers in ari alveolus or lymph in a lymj)h sjDace than we had in 1884. 



I might multiply such exami^les of progress on more or less old lines 

 until I wearied you, but I will try not to do so. I wish rather to dwell 

 for a few minutes on some of what seem to be the salient new features 

 of the period under review. 



One such feature is, I venture to think, the development of what 

 may perhaps be called the new i)hysio]ogical chemistry. We always 

 are, and for a long time always have been, learning something new 

 about the chemical phenomena of living beings. During the years 

 preceding those immediately recent, great progress, for which we have 

 especially, perhaps, to thank Kiiline, was made in our knowledge of 

 the bodies which we speak of as proteids and their allies. But while 

 admitting to the full the high value of all these researches and the 

 great light which they threw on many of the obscurer problems of the 

 chemical changes of the body, such, for instance, as the digestive 

 changes and the clotting of blood, it could not but be felt that their 

 range was restricted and their value limited. Granting the extreme 

 usefulness of being able to distinguish bodies through their solution or 

 precipitation by means of this or that salt or acid, this did not seem to 

 promise to throw much light on the all-important x)roblem as to what 

 was the connection between the chemical constitution of such bodies 

 aud their work in the economy of a living being. For it need not be 

 argued that this is an all-important prviblem. To-day, as yesterday 

 and as in the days before, the mention of the word vitalism or its 

 equivalent separates as a war cry physiologists into two camps, one 

 contending that all the jDhenomena of life can, and the other that they 

 can not, be explained as the result of the action of chemico-physical 

 forces. For myself, I have always felt that while such a controversy, 

 like other controversies, as I ventured to say just now, is useful as a 

 stirring of the waters, through which much oxygen is brought home to 



