( xxiv ) 



the enlargement of the hepatic veins in the cardiac and pulmonary 

 obstruction is reproduced in the warm-blooded diving animals by 

 the temporary enlargement of the portal and hepatic veins, which 

 disappears on the first expansion of the lungs by respiration. The 

 anatomy of the perfect form is widely different from that of the im- 

 perfect with its arrested development ; and, in the same way, the func- 

 tion of the higher organ or group of organs may be degraded to many 

 inferior results. It would seem as if the secretion of one of the sugars 

 belonging to vegetable life implies a descent in the function of animal 

 life, and so we gain in diagnosis less, it is true, in the change of struc- 

 ture than in that of functional alteration. And analogous results are 

 seen in the chemical condition of secretions. Here the function of 

 secretion, if not the structure, is retrogressive, and the animal organ 

 comes to represent a lower or vegetable function. 



Biology, looked on as a study of the mystery of life, is to be 

 considered in its normal and abnormal phenomena, as well as the 

 relation of phj'sical investigation to vital conditions. And this 

 brings before us largely the present state of Curative, and, more 

 directly, of Preventive Medicine — for it is by physical investigation 

 that the medical science of the present day has so largely advanced. 

 Acoustic, Optical, Chemical, and Electric conditions must now all be 

 studied in relation to this great question. The discovery and dif- 

 ferential diagnosis by auscultation of the normal and abnormal states 

 of the heart, arteries, air-tubes, pulmonary cells, and, in many in- 

 stances, too, of the abdominal viscera, including the uterus, has been 

 carried, when considered in connexion with the general state of the 

 system, to a great point of advance. The ophthalmoscope has revealed 

 not alone changes of the eye, but of organs distant from the 63^6; 

 cerebral, cardiac, and embolic disease. In the hands of Dr. Cruise, the 

 endoscope enables us to discover, to study and measure a vesical cal- 

 culus — an almost capillary stricture, and to direct a local treatment to 

 an ulcerated state of the intestinal surface. In Surgery, too, we can 

 make use of anaesthetics to prevent all pain in operation, whether 

 they be used by inhalation or direct contact with the part. The loss 

 of blood, too, under the knife is prevented, in most cases, by the method 

 of Esmarch. On a late occasion of the operation for supra-condyloid 

 amputation of the thigh, Mr. Adams, Regius Professor of Surgery in 

 Dublin University, said, "This is the first time I have witnessed a 



