PHYSIOLOGY 1 



PROFESSOR FREDERIC S. LEE 

 Columbia Uxivkksitv. Xkw York City 



In the introductory lecture of the present course we 

 were told that ours is the golden age of mathematics. 

 As week after week has passed by since then, we have 

 been led from one golden age to another, convinced, for 

 the time, that the present brilliant achievements of each 

 science outshine those of all the others. A few days ago 

 I found on my desk an entomological monograph, the 

 opening sentence of which reads, "The present age is 

 the age of insects." I shall not attempt to harmonize the 

 declarations of my Columbia colleagues with that of my 

 entomological friend. But I feel that I should be derelict 

 in my devotion to my own subject if I did not state 

 frankly at the outset of my lecture— what ought, how- 

 ever, to be a self-evident truth— that the present is pre- 

 eminently the age of physiology. Xor, following again 

 the example of my predecessors, need I be over-modest 

 in my claims as to the place of physiology in the scientific 

 hierarchy. For Fick speaks of it as "the highest and 

 most fruitful generalization of the collective natural 

 sciences," and Czermak calls it "the summit of all the 

 sciences. ' ' 



It need not be emphasized that no exact boundary line 

 exists for any one of the biological sciences. The proper 

 domain of each extends, at its borders, imperceptibly into 

 the domains of all, and within the boundary zones it is 

 difficult to say what belongs to one and what to another. 

 With this in mind it is impossible sharply to delimit the 

 science of physiology. Nevertheless its proper domain is 



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