Page:The Harveian oration 1903.djvu/62

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56 THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1903

certain ions are capable of bringing about forms of irritability in nerves and muscles which do not exist normally may perhaps furnish the explanation of a certain number of morbid phenomena (neurosis and hysteria) in which the motor and sensory reactions of the patient are modified.”

In thus labouring as it may seem the successive phases of structure from the grossly obvious to such as the microscope discloses, and thence to the hypothetical chemical and electrical constitution of the material involved, it is not for a moment claimed that the investigation and the observation of functional manifestation have waited for anatomical discovery. In many departments of physiology, notably in that concerned with nerve and muscle and with secretion, a large mass of information has been acquired as the result of carefully devised experiments, whilst but little has been done towards ascertaining the ultimate structure of the tissues concerned, little, that is, beyond what was known a score of years ago or more. But in respect to such tissues as these, microscopic examination would seem almost to have reached its limits, and for the complete comprehension of the physico-chemical phenomena, more recently ascertained, the problem of the chemical and electrical constitution of

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