WALTER GASKELL 5 



I found that incidentally they explained, as no other or earlier 

 work had explained, the inter-relationship between the sym- 

 pathetic system and the endocrine system, between the pituitary, 

 thyroid, adrenals, and genital organs. Nor, so far as I can weigh 

 evidence, can I find that any essential link in the chain has 

 been shown to be out of place. Yet the attitude of the morpho- 

 logists as a body was that of the Levite of the parable. His 

 brother physiologists could not take up the cudgels on Gaskell's 

 behalf : it was for the morphologists to determine the value of 

 the morphological evidence upon which his conclusions were 

 based, and the morphologists in general declined to notice it, 

 but, as though they regarded it as presumptuous for him, a 

 physiologist, to enter their territory, they passed by on the 

 other side. And the years followed the years, and Gaskell 

 died feeling sore that the most sustained piece of work of his 

 life had been side-tracked by those whom it should most have 

 interested. 



Do not misunderstand me, and think that I am making a 

 specific attack upon zoologists and botanists. As I have pointed 

 out, we of the medical profession are tarred with the same brush. 

 All I would urge is that just as we who are most interested in 

 the advance of medical science accept gladly the results and 

 the discoveries of workers in all branches of science, applying 

 them to the elucidation and treatment of disease, so, in return, 

 when investigators into the problems of medicine make notable 

 advances, these be accepted willingly and utilized by the workers 

 in other branches. It is not a matter of what we owe to those 

 other branches in the first place ; that is freely admitted. The 

 renascence of medicine in our generation is due to the labours 

 of men like Ferdinand Kohn the botanist, Pasteur the physical 

 chemist, and Metchnikoff the zoologist, but if the dwarf, perched 

 on the shoulders of the giant, 1 sees further and sees more than 

 does the giant, it is not well to neglect his observations on the 

 ground that he is a dwarf. 



1 As might be expected, this metaphor was not original with Burton in the 

 Anatomy of Melancholy. I find that Firmin-Didot (Aide Manuce, Paris, 1875, 

 p. 343) cites Haureau (Histoire de la philosophie scholastigue, Paris, 1872) as 

 deriving it, according to Joannes Sarisberiensis (Metalogicus, vol. iii. oap. 4) 

 from Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century. 



