in its Relations to Physiology. 411 



Progress of Chemistry." This proceeding was continued in his subse- 

 quent Annual Reports, and appeared at length so completely at va- 

 riance with his former principles that I thought it my duty to call his at- 

 tention to its injustice. I desired him to consider that our long stand- 

 ing and intimate friendship forbade me to repel his attacks in the man- 

 ner they deserved, and that I therefore stood defenceless. 



All this was unavailing ; there was a chasm between us which no 

 longer admitted of being filled up, and it is only after having suffered 

 the most insulting and injurious attacks, that I perceive (to quote Ber- 

 zelius's own words) " that it would be a misfortune to science to permit 

 its interests to be set aside for friendship's sake." (Ann. Rep., 23, 

 p. 576.) 



In the Twenty-third Annual Report, Berzelius lays aside all modera- 

 tion, and the same hostile disposition towards me is manifested in the 

 new edition of his Manual ; and he has been induced to express opinions 

 upon my labours in inorganic chemistry which are totally unfounded 

 and inexcusable. 



Under these circumstances nothing remains for me save to expose, in 

 all simplicity and candour, the relation in which Berzelius stands to the 

 present state of organic chemistry. And when, in this exposition, I 

 speak of physiologists and pathologists, and the bearings of chemistry 

 on physiology, I must remind my readers that I allude to individuals, 

 or to their intellectual tendencies, whose names I do not mention, 

 because ere long they will cease to have any interest in connection with 

 the matter, and, in fact, they do not at all belong to the subject in 

 dispute. 



During the last four years, since Berzelius has ceased to take any 

 part in experimental investigations of the questions now arising in the 

 science, his whole mental powers have been directed to theoretical spe- 

 culations. But unsupported by his own experiments, his views have 

 found no response in science. As long as he pursued experiments, and 

 confined his inferences to them, the results he obtained were safe and 

 trust-worthy guides in the field of science, but a new domain, foreign to 

 him, has since been cultivated with success; phenomena have been ob- 

 served, contradictory to views formerly held, and inexplicable upon 

 principles derived from the acquisitions of science at that time. This has 

 led to new modes of explaining the phenomena observed, irresistible to 

 all those who have been themselves experimentally engaged in their in- 

 vestigation ; and it is the contest of the former with the latter, — the 

 necessary consequences of the progress of the science, — upon which 

 Berzelius has entered in the spirit of a partisan, a contest the final 



