October 4, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



517 



undertaking will surely triumph. Schemes 

 skilfully devised may delay, but they cannot 

 prevent, the establishment of a University 

 of the United States. 



John W. Hoyt, 

 Chairman National University Committee. 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE 



PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTION OF THE BRITISH 



ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCE- 



3IENT OF SCIENCE* 



When the British Association met in 

 Glasgow twenty-five years ago I had the 

 honor of presiding over Physiology, which 

 was then only a subsection of Section D. 

 The progress of the science during the 

 quarter of a century has been such as to en- 

 title it to the dignity of a section of its own, 

 and I feel it to be a great honor to be again 

 put in charge of the subject. While twenty- 

 five years form a considerable portion of the 

 life of a man, from some points of view they 

 constitute only a short period in the life of 

 a science. But just as the growth of an 

 organism does not always proceed at the 

 same rate, so is it with the growth of a 

 science. There are times when the applica- 

 tion of new methods or the promulgation of 

 a new theory causes rapid development, and 

 there are other times when progress seems 

 to be slow. But even in these quiet periods 

 there may be steady progress in the accumu- 

 lation of facts, and in the critical survey of 

 old questions from newer points of view. 

 So far as physiology is concerned, the last 

 quarter of a century has been singularly 

 fruitful, not merely in the gathering in of 

 accurate data by scientific methods of re- 

 search, but in the way of getting a deeper 

 insight into many of the problems of life. 

 Thus our knowledge of the phenomena of 

 muscular contraction, of the changes in the 

 secreting cell, of the interdependence of 

 organs illustrated by what we now speak of 

 as internal secretion, of the events that 



* Glasgow meeting, 1901. 



occur in the fecundated ovum and in the 

 actively growing cell, of the remarkable 

 processes connected with the activity of an 

 electrical organ, and of the physiological 

 anatomy of the central nervous organs, is 

 very difierent from what it was twenty-five 

 years ago. Our knowledge is now more 

 accurate, it goes deeper into the subject 

 and it has more of the character of scientific 

 truth. For a long period the generaliza- 

 tions of physiology were so vague, and 

 apparently so much of the nature of more 

 or less happy guesses, that our brethren, the 

 physicists and chemists, scarcely admitted 

 the subject into the circle of the sciences. 

 Even now we are sometimes reproached 

 with our inability to give a complete solu- 

 tion of a physiological problem, such as, 

 for example, what happens in a muscle 

 when it contracts ; and not long ago physi- 

 ologists were taunted bj' the remark that 

 the average duration of a physiological 

 theory was about three years. But this 

 view of the matter can only be entertained 

 by those who know very little about the 

 science. They do not form a just concep- 

 tion of the difiBculties that surround all 

 physiological investigation, difficulties far 

 transcending those relating to research in 

 dead matter; nor do they recollect that 

 many of the more common phenomena of 

 dead matter are still inadequately ex- 

 plained. What, for example, is the real 

 nature of elasticity ; what occurs in dis- 

 solving a little sugar or common salt in 

 water; what is electrical conductivity? 

 In no domain of science, except in mathe- 

 matics, is our knowledge absolute ; and 

 physiology shares with the other sciences 

 the possession of problems that, if I may 

 use a paradox, seem to be more insoluble 

 the nearer we approach their solution. 



The body of one of the higher animals — 

 say that of man — is a highly complex mech- 

 anism, consisting of systems of organs, of 

 individual organs and of tissues. Physi- 



