Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/35

Rh Sir Michael Foster's book on the History of Physiology, from which I have already quoted, treats of the older workers who laid the foundations of our science, and whose names I have not done much more than barely mention. Those interested in the giants of the past should consult it. But what I propose to take up this morning is the work of those who have during more recent days been engaged in the later stages of the building. The edifice is far from completion even now. It is one of the charms of physiological endeavor that as the older areas yield their secrets to the explorers new ones are opened out which require equally careful investigation.

If even a superficial survey of modern physiological literature is taken, one is at once struck with the great preponderance of papers and books which have a chemical bearing. In this the physiological journals of to-day contrast very markedly with those of thirty, twenty or even ten years ago. The sister science of chemical pathology is making similar rapid strides. In some universities the importance of biological chemistry is recognized by the foundation of chairs which deal with that subject alone; and though in the United Kingdom, owing mainly to lack of funds, this aspect of the advance of science is not very evident, there are signs that the date cannot be far distant when every well-equipped university or university college will follow the example set us at many seats of learning on the continent and at Liverpool.

With these introductory remarks let me now proceed to describe what appear to me to be the main features of chemical physiology at the present time.

The first point to which I shall direct your attention is the rapid way in which chemical physiology is becoming an exact science. Though it is less than twenty years since I began to teach physiology, I can remember perfectly well a time when those who devoted their work to the chemical side of the science might almost be counted on the fingers of one hand, and when chemists looked with scarcely veiled contempt on what was at that time called physiological chemistry: they stated that physiologists dealt with messes or impure materials, and therefore anything in the nature of correct knowledge was not possible. There was a good deal of truth in these statements, and if physiologists to-day cannot quite say that they have changed all that, they can at any rate assert with truth that they are changing it. This is due to a growing rapprochement between chemists and physiologists. Many of our younger physiologists now go through a thorough preliminary chemical training; and, on the other hand, there is a growing number of chemists—of whom Emil Fischer may be taken as a type—who are beginning to recognize the importance of a systematic study of substances of physiological interest. A very striking instance of this is seen in the progress of our knowledge of the carbohydrates, which has