Developments of Physiology

Abstract

MOST of the fundamental facts of physiology had been discovered before 1869, but nearly all the progress in the nineteenth century up to that time was made in France and Germany; and those who wished to learn the subject properly had perforce to seek instruction abroad—a condition of affairs which is fortunately in great measure now reversed. During the sixties of last century physiology had ceased,.to exist as an active science in this country. There were no laboratories, and no systematic investigations of a physiological character were carried on. The men who professed the subject in our medical schools were physicians or surgeons who were switched on to it as it came to their turn, and imparted to their hearers such knowledge as they might have acquired from books, but were themselves ignorant of the methods and aims of the science they were appointed to teach.