It has been already sufficiently implied per haps that this course in practical physiology is for elementary use, although it serves a helpful purpose also as an introduction and advance summary epitome for courses of physiology the most advanced and technical, as routine experi ence indeed has shown. In high schools, in academies and in academic (collegiate) cur ricula, particularly in those for women, one might expect its value especially to be demon strated. From such schools all laboratory physiology worthy of the name has been hereto fore excluded. It is on this basis and with this intent that the present tentative suggestions have been offered to the science of physiology, for development into an efficient new educa tional method. (Reprinted from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (vol. CLXVII, No. 5, pp. 153-156, 1 Aug. 1912) ; and from the Biologssche Centralblatt, Bd. XXXII, No. 5).
In the light of the colossal slaughter of men and children, women and maidens in the present European conflict, the vivisection problem, in teresting as it is to every kind heart, fades into relative insignificance! Physiologists have taught physiology to considerable classes for a great many years without doing any vivisecting, but it is undeniable that vivisection (without pain or acute discomfort, invariably) without exception is indispensable to the advancement of physiology and of medicine. The reason for this indispensableness of the vivisection of in vertebrates and even mammals lies not only in the essential similarity of the brute and the human organism, but in the often grievously ignored fact that an organ or tissue isolated from the family of which it is a part, is scarcely more that organ or that tissue as it properly is than a slice of on your breakfast-plate is liver in the living animal from which it came.
The most conspicuous example of the lack of consideration of this then undiscovered fact is the grossly misleading study of muscle iso lated from the body of its animal, and already hastening to decay, at first without moisture, without warmth, and even now always without its own intrinsic circulation. To-day physiolo gists for the most part realize that an isolated organ or tissue has only the faintest hints to offer as to its normal mode of action. Think of one trying to study the life of a muscle entirely deprived of its usual changes in adrenin, dextrose and alkalinity, not to mention other essential factors of the living blood! These numerous researches on isolated tissue have un doubtedly served important use, but it is likely that they are not being rapidly enough aban doned even yet for the more philosophic methods of recent days. which study, the best
that may be, the normal entire animal.
Vivisection is indispensable for this kind of work, but vivisection always without pain or acute discomfort, as indeed has been very gen erally the custom everywhere for a generation at least.
Divisions of Animal These, of course, are wholly arbitrary for any one dis cussing the subject, but, as one may see from the writer's textbook, the following topics may well enough serve as chapter headings: Protoplasm should be described morpholog ically, physically and chemically in every text book of physiology intended for the use of students. A baker might succeed in making good bread and pastry out of various grains without knowing anything about these grains and their mode of preparation for his work, but the probability, none the less, is that the baker who has milled 'his own meals and flours and studied their physical properties and respec tive chemical compositions will make a more artistic product than another. All recent text books, so far as the writer is aware, have reme died this old-time defect in physiological text books which left protoplasm to some supposed but usually imaginery biologist.
The Nervous System is the next logical be ginner of a systematic treatise on physiology, as it is one on psychology. Although in sonic re spects the hardest part of physiology, the remainder of the subject cannot be understood unless the chief actions of the autonomic sys tem, spinal cord and the brain are compre hended. Physiology, then, should take the bull by the horns, and with the aid of anatomy and histology, teach the physiology of the nervous system the first thing after protoplasm has been achieved.
In like manner Muscle should be understood and appreciated before the other functions of the body are undertaken. The body in its es sence is motion, a mechanism for dislocating material objects or matter in space. Motion, therefore, is its essence, and it should be well understood accordingly.
As the third part of the mechanism of effi ciency the Glands should be studied. Endocri nology, the modern science of the functions of the ductless glands, is the most active and at present the most productive part of physiology, and the more we learn about it, the more impor tant does it appear to be. It pervades modern physiology.