354 RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE. 



temperature. All this may be true, but there remains the fact that 

 with Bernard's experiment the new light began ; that experiment marks 

 the beginning of our vasomotor knowledge. 



I have already spoken of the prolonged discussions which, just before 

 the date of Huxley's studentship, were taking place touching the ques- 

 tion whether or no the blood vessels were muscular and contractile. 

 That question had, meanwhile, been definitely settled by Henle's dem- 

 onstration, in 1840, that the tissue in the middle coats of arteries really 

 consisted in part of muscular tissue of the kind known henceforward 

 as plain muscular tissue. But for some years no use was made of this 

 discovery in the direction of explaining the intervention of the nervous 

 system in the government of the circulation. That began with Bernard's 

 experiment. 



It would, I venture to think, be sheer waste of your time and mine, 

 if I were to attempt to labor the theme of the large share in our total 

 physiological knowledge which is now taken up by the vaso-motor 

 system and all that belongs to it, and of the extent to which the physi- 

 ology of that system has woven itself into pathological doctrines, and 

 helped medical practice. I would simply ask the lecturer on physiology 

 in what stress he would find himself if he were forbidden in his teach- 

 ing to say a word which would imply that the caliber of the blood 

 vessels was influenced by the contraction of their walls through nervous 

 influence; or ask the student how often, in an examination of to-day, he 

 would have to sit seeking inspiration by biting his pen, or staring at 

 the roof, if he too, in his answers, could never refer to vaso motor 

 actions. Whatever part of physiology Ave touch, be it the work done 

 by a muscle, be it the various kinds of secretive labor, be it that main- 

 tenance of bodily temperature which is a condition of bodily activity, 

 be it the keeping of the brain's well-being in the midst of the hydro- 

 static vicissitudes to which daily life subjects it — in all these, as in 

 many others, we find vaso-motor factors intervening; and, to say noth- 

 ing of the share taken by these in the great general pathological con- 

 ditions of inflammation and fever, they also have to be taken account 

 of by the doctor in studying the disordered physiological processes 

 which constitute disease, whatever be the tissue affected by the morbid 

 conditions. Take away from the physiological and pathological doc- 

 trines of to-day all that is meant by the word vasomotor, and those 

 doctrines would be left for the most part, a muddled, unintelligible mass. 

 To so great an extent as that which Bernard's experiment began 

 entered into our modern views. 



It was Bernard's good fortune, but deserved good fortune, to 

 announce, almost at the same time, two fundamental discoveries. For 

 I venture to claim for his discovery of the formation of glycogen in the 

 liver, briefly indicated in 1850, more fully expounded in 1851, an impor- 

 tance only second, if second, to that of the experiment with which we 

 have just been dealing. 



