No. 498] 



PHYSIOLOGY 



395 



easily surveyed. Physiology deals with the process of 

 life, the living of living substance. It is a dynamic, not 

 a static science. The form, structure and composition 

 of living things do not properly come within its scope: 

 they form the subject matter of morphological, static sci- 

 ences." But the changes in form, structure and composi- 

 tion, which are manifestations of the life process, are 

 proper subjects of physiological study. Its material 

 exists wherever life exists. Whether it be the growth 

 of a man or of a tree, the creeping of an amoeba or the 

 contraction of a muscle, the beating of a heart or the 

 production of a disease by a bacterium, the mental ac- 

 tivity of a brain or the response of an infusorian to light, 

 the process of reproduction or of inheritance, the phe- 

 nomena of nutrition or the behavior of an organism to 

 changes in its environment— all of these and a thousand 

 others are physiological phenomena and proper subjects 

 of investigation in the physiological laboratory. It is 

 true that many departments of learning, which essentially 

 are branches of physiological science, have been so far 

 specialized in the methods of their pursuit and their aims 

 and augmented by non-physiological additions, as to 

 entitle them to specific names. In such cases it often is 

 not expedient for physiology to busy itself with the more 

 remote results of the operations of its laws. The great 

 biologist of the last century, Johannes Miiller, was wont 

 to say, "Psychologies nemo nisi physiologus." But, 

 although psychic phenomena are inextricably linked with 

 neural processes, the right of psychology to be recog- 

 nized as entitv. with the study of nsvehic phenomena 



