Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/40

34 they ultimately turn out to be wrong, or only partly right, they have given to their fellows some general idea on which to work; if the general idea is incorrect, it is important to prove it to be so in order to discover what is right later on. No one has ever seen an atom or a molecule, yet who can doubt that the atomic theory is the sheet anchor of chemistry? Mendeleeff formulated his periodic law before many of the elements were discovered; yet the accuracy of this great generalization has been such that it has actually led to the discovery of some of the missing elements.

I propose to illustrate these general remarks by a brief allusion to two typical sets of researches carried out during recent years in the region of chemical physiology. I do not pretend that either of them has the same overwhelming importance as the great discoveries I have alluded to, but I am inclined to think that one of them comes very near to that standard. The investigations in question are those of Ehrlich and of Pawlow. The work of Ehrlich mainly illustrates the useful part played by bold theorizing, the work of Pawlow that played by the introduction of new and bold methods of experiment.

I will take Pawlow first. This energetic and original Russian physiologist has by his new methods succeeded in throwing an entirely new light on the processes of digestion. Ingeniously devised surgical operations have enabled him to obtain the various digestive juices in a state of absolute purity and in large quantity. Their composition and their actions on the various foodstuffs have thus been ascertained in a manner never before accomplished; an apparently unfailing resourcefulness in devising and adapting experimental methods has enabled him and his fellow workers to discover the paths of the various nerve impulses by which secretion in the alimentary canal is regulated and controlled. The importance of the physical element in the process of digestion has been experimentally verified. If I were asked to point out what I considered to be the most important outcome of all this painstaking work, I should begin my answer by a number of negatives, and would say, not the discovery of the secretory nerves of the stomach or pancreas; not the correct analysis of the gastric juice, nor the fact that the intestinal juice has most useful digestive functions; all of these are discoveries of which any one might have been rightly proud; but after all they are more or less isolated facts. The main thing that Pawlow has shown is that digestion is not a succession of isolated acts, but each one is related to its predecessor and to that which follows it; the process of digestion is thus a continuous whole; for example, the acidity of the gastric juice provides for a delivery of pancreatic juice in proper quantity into the intestine; the intestinal juice acts upon the pancreatic, and so enables the latter to perform its powerful actions. I am afraid this example, as I have tersely stated it,