356 



Anniversary Meeting, 



[Nov. 30, 



your officers and the Committee. It is work which only in its results 

 comes before the eye of the Society ; but I think you will agree with me 

 that those results show how well and faithfully the work has been done. 



On the motion of Sir James Alderson, seconded by Mr. Francis Galton, 

 it was resolved — " That the thanks of the Society be returned to the 

 President for his Address, and that he be requested to allow it to be 

 printed." 



The President then proceeded to the presentation of the Medals : — 

 The Copley Medal has been awarded to Professor Claude Bernard, 

 Por. Mem. E.S., for his numerous contributions to the science of Phy- 

 siology. 



It fell to the lot of Claude Bernard to make, at about the same time, 

 two discoveries of which it may be said that they have proved more 

 pregnant of physiological interest than any two discoveries which have 

 been made by the same man during the last five-and-twenty years. 

 Not only were the discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver, and 

 of vaso-motor nerves, of prime importance at the time at which they 

 were made, but their subsequent influence on the progress of physiology 

 has been such that it would bo difficult to overrate it. 



When, in 1853, Bernard published his work 'Sur une Nouvelle 

 Ponction du Pole,' physiologists, notwithstanding the proof afforded by 

 Liebig and others that animals are able to form fat out of the starch and 

 sugar of their food, still clung with remarkable tenacity to the view that 

 the great distinction between animal and vegetable life lay in the fact that 

 the chemical actions of the former were exclusively destructive, and of the 

 latter constructive. When, however, Bernard showed that the hepatic 

 cells were able, like the vegetable cells, to manufacture and deposit in 

 themselves a veritable starcJi, the older view received its death-blow ; the 

 constructive powers of the animal economy could no longer be denied, 

 and the minds of physiologists became open to the fact that in studying 

 animal nutrition they must be prepared for the existence of other pro- 

 cesses than those of simple destructive oxidation. The subsequent dis- 

 covery of glycogen in other (and especially in f 08tal) tissues made this still 

 more clear. How beneficial this clearing-away of erroneous theoretical 

 conceptions has been is shown by the rapid progress which the ph^^siology 

 of nutrition has made during the last quarter of a century. 



The discovery of glycogen has also another influence of a general cha- 

 racter. Governed too much by the leading idea of the animal body being 

 composed of organs with special functions, physiologists were content 

 with the view that the liver was an organ whose function is to secrete 

 bile, and that when it had secreted a proper quantity of bile its work 

 was done. The fact that in the liver, at the same time that bile 

 was being secreted, chemical labours of an apparently wholly different 



