Address to the Sub-Section of Physiology of the British Association, Birmingham, 1865 / delivered by the President, Henry W. Acland.

  • Acland, Henry W. (Henry Wentworth), 1815-1900.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the Sub-Section of Physiology of the British Association, Birmingham, 1865 / delivered by the President, Henry W. Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the horizon of biological study in a way not less snrprising than does the dawn of day to a traveller, who, haying by night ascended some lofty peak, sees gradually unfolding an extent and detail of prospect which he can generally survey, though he cannot hope to verify each detail and visit eveiy nook in the brief time allotted to him for ti-avel. The desire rerum cognoscere causas ui-ges him even more keenly than to know the things themselves. Thus in Biology, the laws of the genesis of every knaown organic being haA'e now become as niuch the object of investigation as was once the nature of the being itself. The existence of defi- nite species or varieties was formerly assumed in an arbitrary manner to be a kind of necessity. The seai-ch after the laws which produced those species, and the signification of them, has become as ardent as was once the definition of the spe- cific characters. But it is a far more difficult pursuit, and requires either a very special education, or remarkable natural powers. The difficulty pervades every department of Biology in gToss and in detail. Darwin seeks the solution for the whole kingdom of nature. The Histologist, the Pathologist, the Organic Chemist approaches it in the detail of eveiy mechanical textm-e, and of eveiy organic chemical compoimd. We are apt to look on the Museum of John Hunter as the most philosophic and extensive exposition of Biological Science in this or any other coimtry. And justly so. Inquiring originally into what is the proper treatment of disease, he asks in order, What is its natui-e? what its cause ? how are the fimctions disordered ? how are they performed in health ? by what me- chanism ? how is this mechanism varied ? whence did it originate ? But compare with his knowledge the Imowledge of biologists of the present period viewed col- lectively : take om' knowledge of the ovum, for instance, and its development, or the minute anatomy of the tissues, or (may I venture to use the epithet for so vast a collection of ascertained truth ?) the nascetit chemistiy of living structures, pr the relations of osseous structures in the Vertebrata. It were haixl to say which is the more remarkable, Hunter's comprehensiveness, or the detail of modern science. Yet how many details are still needed for a safe Biological Philosophy. Yet are we only on the threshold of detailed knowledge. We still speak of many hard points with an almost childlike simplicity. WTiat do we understand, for instance, of the cause of that which Herbert Spencer calls Organic Polarity— that is to say, the power, force, or tendency by which lost parts are repaired—by which a whole limh—or part of a limb—or even all but a whole body is replaced by the outgi'owth from what remains of the original unmutilated whole—a process so common in Asteriadte and Crustacea and other animals as to seem a matter of course in their history, while it is apparently a property which cannot exist in the higher animals ? What do we know of the causes of hereditaiy trfinsmission in f/cjieml (a property wholly different from, and more unintelligible, than the hypo- tiiesis of natural selection), or of the transmission of disease in jmi-ticular, as for example, of Carcinoma ? What is it in its essence ? How does it originate in an indi-\'idual of imtainted family ? How is it transmitted ? Is it an original property of the ovum per se, or of the nutrient plasma \>\ which that ovum is nourished up to the time of its birth ? Could food, or mode of life, or any specific agent eradicate the tendencies to transmission, just as in certain cases we empi- rically modify the transmission of tubercle ? or is the transmission of the Carcinoma as inevitable in certain cases as the development of the germ ? Grave questions for future solution. These allusions to disease, I need not say, arc purposely introduced. There seems to be a tendency in some modem physiologists to pay insufficient aftenlion to the retrograde metamorjihosis of living creatures. The study of death is^ as much an object of biological science as tlu^ study of birth. The whole being originates, reaches maturity, declines, and dies. So does every part. He sirives with vain endeavour to gi'asp the history of any organic thing, who does not regard it in relation to its origin, its growth, its dissolution, its relations to olij(!Ct3 external to it, the changes which it undergoes in itself and of itself, and the modifications, accidental or necessary, which external agents can and may in- duce in it. • fl3 • General considerations of this kind have a certain, though subordinate office in Bcientific deliberations, and seem just now not out of place. It will be remembered