1 62 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 



Sci. Mem., iv, xxvn, p. 473). In this the impossibility 

 of exhausting the supply by human agency is pointed 

 out. 



Part of the interest of the year has relation to medicine, 

 for Huxley was appointed a member of the Royal Com- 

 mission on the Medical Acts (the work of which was 

 completed in 1882), and also lectured (on August 9) to 

 the International Medical Congress in London on " The 

 Connection of the Biological Sciences with Medicine" 

 (Nature, xxiv, 1881, pp. 342-6. Sci. Mem., iv, xxvm, 

 p. 493. Coll. Essays, iii, p. 347). In this a sketch is 

 given of the rise of medicine from crude beginnings to 

 the position of a science, and pathology is claimed as a 

 branch of biology, this having been recognized after the 

 establishment of the cell theory. Modern physiology, 

 upon which pathology depends, begins with Descartes : — 



" There can be no question, then, as to the nature or the 

 value of the connection between medicine and the biological 

 sciences. There can be no doubt that the future of pathology 

 and of therapeutics, and, therefore, that of practical medicine, 

 depends upon the extent to which those who occupy themselves 

 with those subjects are trained in the methods and impregnated 

 with the fundamental truths of biology." 



It is suggested that no more important subject could 

 be considered by the Congress, than how best, without 

 including useless details, the medical student, — 



"... may be enabled to obtain^a firm grasp of the great truths 

 respecting animal and vegetable life, without which, notwith- 

 standing all the progress of scientific medicine, he will still find 

 himself an empiric." 



The British Association was held at York this summer, 

 and Huxley chose a historical subject on which to lecture, 

 " The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology " (Nature, xxiv, 



