OCTOBEK 28, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



557 



THE DOMAIN OF PHYSIOLOGY AND ITS 

 RELATIONS TO MEDICINE.* 



Physiology is of medical parentage, was 

 reared by medical men and is still housed 

 and fed by medical faculties. Still it is 

 medicine against which its frequent decla- 

 ration of independence is directed. Medi- 

 cine is a practical science and is too inexact, 

 and physiology wishes to be a pui'e, exact 

 science. It, therefore, tries to keep aloof 

 from medicine and manifests a longing for 

 association with or, still better, for a reduc- 

 tion to, physics and chemistry. It urges, 

 furthermore, that the affiliation with medi- 

 cine binds physiology down to only one 

 species of animal with intricate, compli- 

 cated conditions, while it would be more 

 beneficial to physiology if it would direct 

 its energies towards a study of monocellu- 

 lar organisms where the conditions are so 

 simple. 



Permit me to discuss briefly the domain 

 of physiology and the importance of its 

 relations to medicine as they present them- 

 selves to my mind. There can be no doubt 

 whatsoever that physiology has a perfectly 

 legitimate object entirely of its own. Per- 

 haps I may elucidate this statement in the 

 following crude way. All natural phenom- 

 ena impress us in two ways — as matter 

 and as force. The phenomena are either 

 inanimate or animate. The studies of inan- 

 imate matter are to be found in mineral- 

 ogy, crystallography, in a part of chem- 

 istry, etc. The studies of the forces or en- 

 ergies of inanimate phenomena are carried 

 on by physics and physical chemistry. In 

 the fields of living phenomena, matter is 

 studied by gross and minute anatomy and 

 by descriptive zoology and botany, or in 

 short by morphology. The studies of the 

 forces, the energies or the functions of 

 living matter, are the proper domain of 



* Chairman's address at the Section of Physiol- 

 ogy of the World's Congress of Arts and Science, 

 at St. Louis, September 23, 1904. 



physiology. Now this definition permits a 

 few deductions. All these four divisions 

 are bound, as sciences, to have something 

 in common in their methods of investiga- 

 tion; they must employ the inductive 

 inethod and n-ust strive to reach in their 

 results that degree of certainty which the 

 nature of each individual science permits 

 it to attain. But the four divisions differ 

 greatly from one another; each one has its 

 own subjects and laws and its own prob- 

 lems, which have to be solved by methods 

 peculiarly adapted for each division. It 

 is certainly clear to every one that it can 

 not be the essential task of animal morphol- 

 ogy to reduce itself to mineralogy because 

 it can be demonstrated that some anatom- 

 ical objects contain lime and other mineral 

 substances. It seems to me it ought to be 

 also clear to every one that it can not be the 

 sole task, and not even the essential task, 

 of .physiology to reduce itself to physics 

 and chemistry because some or many of the 

 living phenomena are governed to some ex- 

 tent by known laws of physics and chem- 

 istry. Physiology has to study the func- 

 tional side of life, and in the attempts to 

 elucidate its complex phenomena it cer- 

 tainly has to employ also the known facts 

 of physics and chemistry. But if we would 

 confine the domain of physiology to such 

 parts only which can be interpreted by the 

 laws of physics and chemistry of to-day, 

 we would have to give up nine hundred 

 and ninety-nine out of a thousand of the 

 phenomena of life as still inappropriate for 

 physiological study. The four divisions of 

 the natural sciences are closely interwoven 

 and each one can, of course, profit by the 

 experience of the others. Boyle, Mayow, 

 Priestley, Lavoisier and others attempted 

 to unravel the nature of oxygen, nitrogen 

 and carbon dioxide gas by the aid of ex- 

 perimental studies of the physiology of res- 

 piration. The physicist or the chemist em- 

 ploys any method which would help him 



