October 28, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



561 



received enly a secondary attention, and 

 tliat again essentially from morphological 

 quarters. At the present time still more 

 knowledge is being diligently added to the 

 stores of medical wisdom. Chemistry has 

 taken a powerful hand in the studies of 

 physiology and pathology and is attaining 

 brilliant results. But we should not be 

 misled. The stvidies are essentially mor- 

 phological in their nature. It is physio- 

 logical and pathological chemistry, and but 

 very little chemical physiology and pathol- 

 ogy. Even if the hopes of the new school 

 of brilliant chemical investigators will, in- 

 deed, be realized, viz., that in a not far off 

 future they will know the structure of 

 proteids and all their constituent bodies, it 

 will be the knowledge of the proteids of 

 the dead bodies, it will be a brilliant post- 

 mortem chemistry. Living animal matter, 

 however, is something else than dead pro- 

 teids, as living plants are something else 

 than carbohydrates, although the knowl- 

 edge of the latter has already reached the 

 ideal stage where some of them can be pro- 

 duced synthetically. No, a study of life, 

 normal and abnormal, is essentially a study 

 of energy, of function ; of course, the knowl- 

 edge of the underlying morphology, dead or 

 living, is a prerequisite for such studies. 

 And let me state right here that there seems 

 to be a difference in the make-up of the 

 human mind with regard to the different 

 studies. Some are more apt and better en- 

 dowed to grapple with the problems of 

 energy, and others again have natural 

 talents for the science of morphology. 

 Only few, however, have the good for- 

 tune of becoming educated in the lines 

 of their natural endovsrtnents, and still 

 fewer have the genius to work out their 

 natural destinies against all odds, against 

 all education and training. Now the men 

 who did and who now do the original work 

 in the medical sciences received their train- 

 ing in the studies of medicine, four fifths 



of which is profoundly developed, magnifi- 

 cent morphology. We can not wonder, 

 therefore, that most of the original contri- 

 butions to the medical sciences are essen- 

 tially of a morphological character. Even 

 in the very recent brilliant additional de- 

 partments of medicine, in bacteriology and 

 chemistry, the research work is, as already 

 stated above, for the most part of a mor- 

 phological stamp. It is true that a few 

 men of genius in medicine, Cohnheim for 

 instance, broke their acquired chains and 

 made an attempt to study pathology from 

 a functional point of view. Such attempts, 

 however, were not many and their perma- 

 nent influence is not extensive. What is 

 now termed general pathology or even 

 pathological physiology consists, in the first 

 place, of a collection of histological, bac- 

 teriological and chemical facts of a general 

 but essentially of a morphological nature, 

 including at the same time the applications 

 of a few well-established physiological facts 

 to pathology and a few results from direct 

 experimentation in pathology, 'that is not 

 a study of physiology under pathological 

 conditions, and certainly not a study of 

 general physiological laws which can be 

 stimulated by and derived from a study of 

 pathological processes. And it is just this 

 kind of study which is missing, and which 

 could be developed only by a purposeful 

 and concerted action of the men who have 

 a training in the study of the functional 

 side of life, among whom there are surely 

 many who have a natural endowment for 

 such studies. 



The following review of the present sit- 

 uation in medicine will show us the place 

 left vacant by physiology and the disas- 

 trous consequences. The studies of patho- 

 logical anatomy extend over all divisions 

 of medicine, are lucid and nearly complete. 

 Diseases which are exclusively due to pal- 

 pable anatomical changes are quite well 

 understood. Their harmful effects are, for 



