Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/17

 to be decided by a knowledge of the functions of the liver. So in diabetes and many other diseases, the questions mainly discussed by the teacher before his class are purely physiological ones; and this discussion bears its fruits. Witness, for example, the amount of knowledge obtained by ourselves relating to the functions of the nervous system; such as the varieties of sensation, as of touch, pain, heat, and cold, together with the time of transmission of sensations, and many other phenomena associated with disease of the spinal cord, which could scarcely have been known had not the facts been observed in the human subject. Our actual acquaintance with the functions of the nervous system, as gained in the physiological laboratory is small compared with what may be learned in the wards of a hospital. Could we gain any approach to an insight into the remarkable properties of the nervous system, had we merely laboratory experiments to guide us, and had we never seen the vagaries of hysteria? An acquaintance with sim physiological laws derived from observation in animals and healthy men, gives as no clue to some of the most remarkable phenomena we witness in women. It is from