Page:The Harveian oration 1912.djvu/27

Rh outcome of my argument, but that by such means a much greater and a more absolute resolution of ourselves is possible, and our primary elements, being unfettered, renew their potential energy to synthesize again by some of Nature’s seductively elastic methods as now still unknown or but guessed at. There is nothing strange in this. Our environment in diverse ways, known and unknown, is essential to the working of the machine, of course, but I am contending for the possibility of still more direct methods of combination that have become conceivable in these days of progressive physical knowledge. And from this point of view it becomes legitimate perhaps to try and catch a glimpse, behind the veil of present attainment, of the working of the obviously potent influence of climate upon temperament, constitution, and disease. For it is at any rate conceivable that light or electricity split up, energy in one garb or another liberated in this way or that, might make to waver between negative and positive some weak-kneed member of our society of constituents, might loosen the force of attraction that had hitherto kept its atoms bound, might thus katabolize our tissues, and involve new varieties of function, in some hitherto unsuspected way. How, for instance, should plant-life have photo-synthetic metabolism all to itself?

It is to points like these, unsubstantial, even visionary, though they seem, that pathology is now compelled to turn its attention. And in so doing, although there is still much to be done in the post