Page:The Harveian oration 1912.djvu/21

Rh The physician thinks not of death, but of the tenacity of life, and of how long, save by catastrophe, it takes to bring the machine to a standstill.

Even in the presence of the pathologist death may be disputed. Many years ago there was what may be called a pathological axiom, that the pus cell was a dead cell. Yet it was at the same time evident that, unemployable or even obnoxious as regards its influence in the home, it had colonizing proclivities that were charged with great possibilities in some new world. Dead indeed it might be from one point of view, yet from another one might say of it, as Lord Curzon said once of the British Empire: “It is not a moribund organism, it is yet in its youth, and has in it the vitality of an unexhausted purpose.” Where, indeed, is the demarcation in a degenerate cell—we call it so from a narrow self-centred aspect-between life and death? We know of none, for even desiccated it does but pass into some more minute state of atomic subdivision, that is almost certainly capable of renewed energy, although it may not as yet be within our ken to give an answer to the question With what body does it come?”

All living things are rhythmic. Is it altogether otherwise with matter devoid of life? Within the cadences of that rhythm are the moan of disease, and the pause and silence of death, but the resurgam of life is ever the dominant of the song. And this is well illustrated by our growing appreciation of the activity of the pus cell. Laudable pus, as it used to be called by a seeming contradiction in terms, I suppose on the altruistic plea that some-