218 Canadian Record of Science. 



The Blood and Blood- Vessels in Health and 

 Disease. 1 



By Wesley Mills, M.A., M.D. 

 Professor of Physiology in McGill University, Montreal. 



Our knowledge of any subject may perhaps be regarded 

 as a perception of relations. As these, however, are innu- 

 merable, the great question becomes, What relations are of 

 the most importance ? From what point of view shall we 

 look at a subject ? Necessarily, this must vary with the 

 progress of all knowledge and with that of the department 

 under consideration. 



When the period of derision and skepticism that followed 

 at once the announcement of the discovery of the circu- 

 lation of the blood by Harvey had passed away, and a body 

 of practitioners, less prejudiced than the great man's own 

 contemporaries, considered the subject, a reaction took 

 place. Undue attention was given the blood in all discus- 

 sion on the aetiology of disease. 



In comparatively recent times the investigations of 

 blood-pressure and kindred problems by Ludwig and his 

 school, diverted attention unduly to that subject, and the 

 influence of this is evident in almost every text-book on 

 physiology at present extant. Believing, myself, that 

 physiology has been confined within extremely narrow 

 limits, that it must in consequence suffer from the intellec- 

 tual myopia of its cultivators, I have within the past year 

 endeavoured to present to the student of this science a work 2 

 on a new plan ; and it is my purpose this evening to ask 

 your consideration to its advantages, which I shall endea- 

 vour to present in so far as they apply to the subject of this 



1 An address delivered before the Ottawa Medical Society, May 

 1890. Reprinted from the New York Medical Journal for Sep- 

 tember 13. 1890. 



2 A Text-booh of Animal Physiology. D. Appleton & Co., New 

 York, October, 1890. 



