SUMMARY 



79 



problems are insignificant and preparatory only, 

 how do nervous impulses so flit to and fro within 

 the nervous system as to issue in the movements 

 which make up what we sometimes call the life of 

 man ? " 



The physiology of the nervous system is 

 wrought to finer issues now than in the time of 

 Bell and Magendie ; and this generation of students 

 may live to see the present facts and methods of 

 cerebral localisation as the mere rudiments or 

 elements of science. Happily for mankind, science 

 has already so far elucidated them that they have 

 done good service for the diagnosis and treatment 

 of disease, and for the saving of lives. 



Some examples have been given, in the fore- 

 going chapters, of the value of physiological experi- 

 ments on animals. It would be easy to lengthen 

 the list, for there is no general subject in all 

 physiology that does not owe something to this 

 method : as Mr Darwin said, in his evidence before 

 the Royal Commission of 1875, "I am fully con- 

 vinced that physiology can progress only by the aid 

 of experiments on living animals. I cannot think 

 of any one step which has been made in physiology 



