METHODS OF PHYSIOLOaiCAL RESEARCH 25 



The wide applicability of this ingenious physical method is due 

 to the perfection of the technique of vivisection on the part of the 

 great French physiologists, Magendie (1783-1855) and Claude 

 Bernard (1813-1878). Claude Bernard guided operative physi- 

 ology to its highest development, without at the same time becoming- 

 narrow. He was a philosophical investigator who in his researches 

 kept in view the general problems of life. It is no wonder, there- 

 fore, that all French physiology of to-day must be considered as 

 of Claude Bernard's school. 



In comparison with the chemical and physical features of physi- 

 ology, after Johannes Mtiller's death other features receded into 

 the background, or were entirely neglected. Psychological research 

 was advanced especiallj^ by discoveries regarding the physiology of 

 the sense-organs, in which the ingenious investigations of Helm- 

 holtz and Hering led to most important results, and the physiology 

 of the central nervous system of higher vertebrates, knowledge of 

 which was perfected by the epoch-making labours of Flourens 

 (1794-1864), Hitzig, Munk, Goltz, Horsley, and others. Preyer's 

 endeavour to follow the develooment o^ the psychical phenomena of 

 human beings through the early years of life has been followed by 

 a few others. At first little attention was paid to the general 

 questions of physiology. Lotze's Allgemeine Physiologic des korper- 

 lichcn Lehens (1851) was purely speculative, and treated physio- 

 logical questions from the standpoint of philosophy ; nevertheless, 

 it necessarily would have proved a valuable stimulus to the 

 experimental physiology of that time in the investigation of 

 important questions, if in exact science interest in general 

 problems had been greater. Although the striking works of 

 Charles Robin, Ghimie, anatomique et physiologique (1853) and 

 Anatomic et physiologic ccllulairc (1873), presented a coherent 

 summary of the anatomy and physiology of the cell, unfortunately 

 they were little appreciated from the physiological side. So also 

 the cell-pathological researches and ideas of Rudolf Virchow 

 {Cellularpathologie, 1858), which quite overturned medical ideas, 

 until very recently and in spite of their showing very clearly the 

 enormous practical importance of general phj'siological researches 

 upon the cell, have had scarcely the slightest influence upon the 

 development of physiology, because the latter science was capti- 

 vated by questions of a more special kind. More attention was 

 excited by Claude Bernard's Lecons sur les pMnomlncs de la vie 

 cominuns cmx animaux et aux vigitaux (1878), which treated 

 a number of general questions concerning life in a classic 

 manner, although somewhat unequall}'. Preyer endeavoured to 

 discuss the questions of general physiology more uniformly in his 

 Elemcntc der allgcmcinen Physiologic (1883), but unfortunately the 

 book contains only a schematic summary of the subject. Finally, 

 the researches of the histologists and the zoologists afforded manj- 



