350 RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE. 



But what we call pathology is a branch — a wide and recondite 

 branch, but still a branch of that larger science which we call physi- 

 ology; it employs the same methods, but applies them to special prob- 

 lems. So much are the two one that it would doubtless be possible to 

 teach pathology to one who knew no physiology ; such a one would 

 learn physiology unawares. But at a great waste of time. For physi- 

 ology, in its narrower sense, being older, has become organized into an 

 engine which can be used for leading the mind quickly and easily into 

 the spirit and methods of true pathological inquiry. The teaching of 

 it as an introduction to pathology is an economy of time. That, I take 

 it, if compulsion be justifiable at all, is the justification of its being a 

 compulsory study. 



Further, the methods of physiology, in turn, are the methods of physics 

 and of chemistry, used hand in hand with other methods special to the 

 study of living beings, the general methods of biology. And here 

 again it is an economy of time that the student should learn these 

 methods each in its own science, and this is the justification for making 

 these sciences also compulsory. But in all the regulations which are 

 issued concerning these several ancillary sciences, this surely should 

 be kept in view, that each science should be taught not as a scientific 

 accomplishment of value in itself, but as a stepping stone to professional 

 knowledge, of value because it is the best means of bringing the 

 student on his way to that. 



II. 



Now let me turn to another theme suggested by what has happened 

 in science and in the profession since the days of Huxley's studentship, 

 and that is the complexity of the bearings of any one discovery, of any 

 one advance, as well on science itself as on the applications of science. 



In the garment of science, with which man is wrapping himself 

 round, or rather is being wrapped round, the several threads are woven 

 into an intricate web. As the loom which is weaving that ever-spread- 

 ing garment takes in new warp and new woof, such threads only of 

 each are taken in as can be fitly joined to those which have come in 

 before; each thread as it is twisted in becomes a hold for other threads 

 to be caught up later on. No single observation, no single experiment 

 stands alone by itself, nor can its worth be rightly judged by itself 

 alone. The mistaken philanthropists who have put restrictions, and 

 would put more on physiological investigations, betray that ignorance 

 of the ways of science, which seems to be a necessary condition of their 

 attitude, when they ask us to state in a sentence the direct application 

 to the good of man of each experiment on a living animal. In the 

 doors of science, each the opening as often of a path as of a chamber, 

 it is not, as such folk seem to think, that each bobbin pulls only one 

 latch. Every experiment, every observation has, besides its immediate 

 result, effects which, in proportion to its value, spread away on all sides 



