Address to the Sub-section of physiology, 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, British Association, Birmingham, 1865 / delivered by the president, Henry W. Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    the horizon of biological study in a way not less surprising than does the dawn of day to a traveller, who, having by night ascended some lofty peak, sees gradually unfolding an extent and detail of prospect which lie can generally survey, though he cannot hope to verify each detail and visit every nook in the brief time allotted to him for travel. The desire “ rerum cognoscere causes ” urges him even more keenly than to know the things themselves. Thus in Biology, the laws of the genesis of every known organic being have now become as much 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 search 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 gross 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 every mechanical texture, and of eveiy organic chemical compound. 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 country. And justly so. Inquiring originally into what is the proper treatment of disease, he asks in order, Wliat is its nature ? what its cause ? how are the functions disordered ? how are they performed in health ? by what me- chanism ? how is this mechanism varied P whence did it originate ? But compare with his knowledge the knowledge of biologists of the present period viewed col- lectively : take our 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 P) the nascent chemistry of living structures, or the relations of osseous structures in the Vertebrata. It were hard 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. What 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 limb—or part of a limb—or even all but a whole body is replaced by the outgrowth from what remains of the original unmutilated whole—a process so common in Asteriadae 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 hereditary transmission in (jeneral (a property wholly different from, and more unintelligible, than the hypo- thesis of natural selection), or of the transmission of disease in particular, as for example, of Carcinoma ? What is it in its essence ? How does it originate in an individual of untainted family ? How is it transmitted ? Is it an original property of the ovum per se, or of the nutrient plasma by 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, are purposely _ introduced. There seems to be a tendency in some modem physiologists to pay insufficient attention to the retrograde metamorphosis of living creatures. The study of death is as much an object of biological science as the study of birth. The whole being originates, reaches maturity, declines, and dies. So does every part. He strives with vain endeavour to grasp the history of any organic thing, who does not regard it in relation to its origin, its growth, its dissolution, its relations to objects 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. General considerations of this kind have a certain, though subordinate office in scientific deliberations, and seem just now not out of place. It will be remembered