The new physiology and other addresses / by J.S. Haldane.

  • Haldane, J. S. (John Scott), 1860-1936.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The new physiology and other addresses / by J.S. Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that I have carefully pondered over these reasons during many years of active physiological work. When we look back on the history of physiology, it seems perfectly evident that physiological progress has been dependent on the progress of physics and chemistry. On this point there is no room for doubt. To take only one example, where should we be in the investigation of animal metabolism but for the ideas and experimental methods furnished to us by physics and chemistry ? We should know next to nothing about respiration, animal heat, nutrition, or muscular and other work. Physiology depends at every turn on physics and chemistry, and its future progress will certainly be equally dependent on advances in physical and chemical knowledge. This consideration has, I imagine, weighed very heavily in the minds of those physiologists who have concluded that physiology is nothing but applied physics and chemistry. A further fact which weighs equally heavily is that in spite of diligent search nothing- contradicting the fundamental laws of conservation of matter and energy has been discovered in connection with living organisms. When, however, we ask what progress has been made towards the physico-chemical explanation of physio- logical processes, we at once enter upon controversy. We may point to advances in some directions, but they are accompanied by the appearance of unforeseen diffi- culties in other directions. Again, to take animal meta- bolism as a typical instance, the investigations of the last hundred and twenty years have enabled us to assign ultimate physical and chemical sources to the energy and material leaving the body in various forms. We