Page:The Harveian oration 1903.djvu/52

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46 THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1903

the non-living bodies with which they deal, so may the physiologist find in the same assumptions a clue to those even more abstruse functions displayed by living materials and furnish to the pathologist and to the clinical physician those data upon which a fuller realization of morbid processes may be obtained, and sounder principles for their prevention or their treatment be laid down.

Where in the whole range of physiological enquiry is to be found a region into which the observer has less penetrated, and where for want of some guidance he is more adrift in the comprehension of what he does recognize than in the complicated region of “ nutrition? ” And yet how essential for the mere framing of a proper dietary, or for an understanding of the protean symptoms collectively denominated “gout” is it that we should be able to form some idea of what becomes of the absorbed food stuffs, when having undergone some elaboration in the epithelial cells, the hepatic tissues, and the blood through which they have passed, they come “ within the sphere of influence ” of the living cell. What too is more important than to be able to attach to the comprehensive term “metabolism” some rational meaning, based upon a knowledge of what actually occurs, and what structural arrangements and rearrangements

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