INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



ON 



SOME RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EDUCATION AND 

 CO-ORDINATION OF FUNCTION. 



By CHARLES J. MACALISTER, M.D, F.R.C.P., 

 President. 



[Delivered October 10th, 1913.] 



Ladies and Gentlemen. — In the days when Professor 

 Herdman and I worked together in the practical laboratories 

 of the University of Edinburgh we used to regard Biology and 

 Natural History as being practically synonymous terms, and in 

 the classes we dealt rather with the morphological, histological 

 and physiological characteristics of a series of types of animals 

 and plants than with problems of life itself. 



Now Biology has a very different significance. The word 

 may be said to represent a hub round which there are grouped 

 many branches of work, for there is not a single point connected 

 either with the structure or constitution, or with the functions 

 of living matter or of living beings, which does not involve 

 considerations which come into the category of the biological 

 sciences. 



Not only, therefore, must we include among biologists the 

 zoologist and botanist, the physiologist and the bio-chemist, but 

 also workers in every region of knowledge which can throw light 

 upon matters appertaining to life ; among these regions comes 

 medicine with its special branches and its allied sciences, and 

 the physician, endeavouring to explain deviations from the 

 normal and to rectify these deviations on rational therapeutic 

 lines, may, I venture to think, fairly claim a place in the 

 brotherhood. I presume that it is a recognition of this claim 

 which has prompted you, not for the first time, to invite a 



