Physiologist

“ To understand the nature of disease we must understand health, and the understanding of the healthy body means the having a knowledge of its structure and of the way in which its manifold actions are performed, which is what is technically termed human anatomy and human physiology. The physiologist again must needs possess an acquaintance with physics and chemistry, inasmuch as physiology is, to a great extent, applied physics and chemistry. ”

“ The duty of the anatomist, or physiologist, is simply to examine the operations of Nature in the animal economy, and the plans which she adopts for accomplishing her objects during health, and for throwing off impediments during disease. In conducting his investigations, the enquirer begins by taking a general view of the whole subject, and then separating [Pg 21] and defining its leading parts. Pulsation, respiration, digestion, and the various secretions and excretions of the body, are defined, and their general connection with each other correctly ascertained. ”

“ All the experiments in physiology consist practically in the production of so many pathological conditions and states. When the physiologist makes injections, sections and stimulations by various agencies, what else does he effect if not the production of the pathological, in order to learn the physiological action of the various tissues and organs? ”

“ The physiologist, unincumbered by the care of the sick, not weighted by the burden of desiring some immediate practical result, is the pioneer into the dark places of vital actions. The truths which he discovers in his laboratory pass over at once to the practitioner, busy in a constant struggle with the puzzling complexity of corporeal events: in his hands they are sifted, extended, and multiplied. ”

“ That physiology is a thing which can take up a man’s [xi] whole energies will, I think, be admitted by anyone who realizes how wide is its scope. The physiologist himself must specialize, for the subject is too vast for one man to undertake the whole. The body is composed of the same elements as the rest of the world, and their arrangement is very important, so he must be a proficient chemist. ”

“ The writers against physiology resemble, in one particular, the writers against luxury. They forget that the functions they know and describe belong to the science of physiology; just as the declaimers against luxury forget that all the conveniences which they enjoy beyond what are possessed in the most simple stage of society, belong to the luxuries of life. [373] The anatomist who describes the circulation of the blood, acts the part of a physiologist, as much as he does, who attempts to explain the functions of the brain. ”

“ The physiologist of the present day is too little of a comparative anatomist, and far too closely enveloped in the absurd jargon of the anthropotomist, ever to hope to reveal any great truth for science, and dispel the mists which still hang over the phenomena of the nervous system. ”

“ How, indeed, can one understand that it is permitted to the physiologist to succeed in explaining the phenomena that occur in all the organs of the body, except a part of those that occur in the brain? Such distinctions cannot exist among vital phenomena. Unquestionably they present very different degrees of complexity, but they are all alike in being either soluble or insoluble by our examination; and the brain, marvellous as those metaphysical manifestations that take place in it appear to us, cannot form an exception among the other bodily organs. ”

“ Although pathology, therefore, as a branch of medical science, is necessarily founded on physiology, questions may nevertheless arise regarding the true character of a structure or organ, to which occasionally the pathologist may be able to return a more satisfactory and decisive reply than the physiologist—these two branches of medical knowledge being thus found mutually to advance and illustrate each other. ”

“ He may make chemical physiology or histology his specialty. But you see physiology is such a floating, growing, mobile science. It exists in no text-book. Photograph it one day, and the picture is unrecognisable the next. What the physiologist has to do is to plunge his mind like a thermometer, into the world of physiological investigation, and register one thing one moment, and another thing the next. He need never carry on experiments on living animals before his students, but he must live in the midst of the growing science—or be a humbug. ”

“ The physiologist considers organisms and their actions from their objective side, and tries to detect the mechanism of the observed phenomena. These he has to interpret in terms of Matter and Motion. The psychologist interprets them in terms of Feeling. The actions which we see in others we cannot feel, except as visual sensations; the changes which we feel in ourselves we cannot see in others, except as bodily movements. The reaction of a sensory organ is by the physiologist called a sensation,—borrowing the term from the psychologist ”

“ The physiologist cuts out a definite part and observes the result. The pathologist observes the result of Nature's experiment by watching the symptoms of his patient, and, after the patient's death, he can ascertain the position of the part diseased. Now, if the old theory be true, according to which the brain acts as a whole, and its various parts do not possess distinct mental functions, a limited area of disease in one part may impair the mental powers but will not produce a loss of one function. ”

“ The second class of experiments carried on without anæsthetics—those entailing a considerable amount of pain—are not only by far the least numerous, but must of necessity become less and less numerous as physiology advances. The end which the physiologist has in view is to analyze the life of any being into its constituent factors. As his science advances, he becomes more and more able to disengage any one of these factors from the rest, and so to study it by itself. ”

“ Conventionally considered, a properly equipped physiologist must have a working knowledge of certain phases of modern physics and chemistry in addition to his grounding in biology. A properly trained anatomist should have a knowledge of physiological and developmental processes, or his anatomy is purely descriptive and static. ”

“ And, as regards the physiologist, he has frequently to search the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms not only to discover those forms which give him the best opportunity of studying certain phenomena, but also to get at those fundamental ideas which lie at the base of his whole science. ”

“ Those physiologists who voice the common opinion of their laboratories, tell us with practical unanimity that no consideration of final causes should be allowed to intrude into the science of physiology. ”

“ It is no use knowing what will stop certain unpleasant symptoms if we do not know how to remove their real cause, and for this end the whole body and every individual component organ is being studied, that the process of life may be accurately understood; and the man who is doing this for his friend the doctor is the physiologist. ”

“ Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as dependent for its manifestation of particular molecular arrangements as any physical or chemical phenomenon; and wherever he extends his researches, fixed order and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as plainly as in the rest of Nature. ”

“ Of parts like those described, and of others of a higher order, as will be presently seen, the most complex nervous system, even that of man, is composed. Evidence to be used in these investigations. It might, perhaps, be expected that for the determination of the duty of each part of such complex system the physiologist must necessarily resort to experiment, observing what functions have been injured or destroyed when given portions have been removed by his knife. ”

“ In recent times physiology has indeed made great, and to many startling, advances in the direction of connecting mental phenomena with brain-changes. Physiologists have established the correlation of physical and chemical with vital forces, and probably of vital with mental forces. They have proved in every act of perception the existence of a vibratory thrill passing along the nerve-cord from sense-organ to brain; and in every act of volition a similar vibratory thrill from brain to muscle ”

“ Further, as the doctor is more easily discussed than medicine, the physiologist will be more manageable for our immediate purpose than physiology in the abstract, so we will devote the first few pages to the question of how his labours benefit the patient. ”

“ Every student of the history of the science will note how from the very necessities of the case the metaphysiologists, without relinquishing their Vital Principle, have been led more and more to enter on the track of the physiologists, pursuing their researches more and more into the processes going on in the organism, and assigning more and more causal efficiency to these, with a corresponding restriction of the province of their extra-organic cause. ”

“ Hitherto, however, the physiologists have immeasurably outstripped the pathologists in the comprehensiveness of their views, and, therefore, in the value of their results. For, the [412] best physiologists distinctly recognize that the basis of their science must include, not only the animals below man, but also the entire vegetable kingdom, and that, without this commanding survey of the whole realm of organic nature, we cannot possibly understand even human physiology, still less general physiology. ”

“ Hence in the study of physiology in schools many things must be taken for granted. The observation and experience of medical men, and the experiments of the physiologist in his laboratory must be depended upon for data which cannot be well obtained at first hand by young students. ”

“ For the first time in the history of science, physiologists are now in the position to say that they have arrived at clear and distinct, though by no means complete, conceptions of the manner in which the great functions of assimilation, respiration, secretion, distribution of nutriment, removal of waste products, motion, sensation, and reproduction are performed ”

“ Since comparative anatomists and physiologists have revealed the structure of animals and the functions of their organs, from the lowest protozoan to the highest vertebrate, the physician may avail himself of this knowledge, and thus gain a deeper insight into the structure and physiology of man. An intimate acquaintance with the physical, is a necessary preparation for the study of the psychical life, for it leads to the understanding of their mutual relations and reactions, both in health and disease. ”

“ And if a forecast may be made without offence, it is certain that the work of physiology, as in the past and the present, so in the near future, will exercise a profound influence for good on medical and surgical treatment. Among the subjects that especially occupy physiologists now are, the more exact localisation and interpretation of the special 69 sense-centres, and the better knowledge of the internal secretions and chemical influences of the glands and tissues of the body. ”

“ When we attempt to do the first of these things, we are physiologists. When we attempt to do the second, we are pathologists. [817]
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Physiology and pathology are thus the two fundamental divisions of all organic science. [818] Each is intimately connected with the other; and eventually, no doubt, both will be fused into a single study, by discovering laws which will prove that here, as elsewhere, nothing is really abnormal, or irregular. ”

“ If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, namely, that this mutual interdependence between the spiritual and the material is itself also dependent on law, and he has discovered the bond by which the science of matter and the science of consciousness are united into a single whole. ”

“ The animal functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinction from the organic, tend, in the process of deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of movement. Every man’s heart (this organ belongs, you know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of action; but I know a great many men whose brains, and all their voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. ”

“ That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved—who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man;" ”

“ What are all the organs and tissues for, and what takes place within the parts that are actually alive? Physiology attempts to answer questions of this nature. It therefore stands in contrast with anatomy and is supplementary to it. The activities of the body are varied and depend on life for their manifestation — they may be called vital activities. Physiology embraces a study of them all. This subject began to attract the attention of the ancient medical men, who wished to fathom the activities of the body in order to heal it in disease. ”