CHAPTER I.

"EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY."

THROUGHOUT the somewhat varied experience of more than thirty years of pretty active life I do not remember to have encountered a much more painful task than that now imposed upon me. From the purely controversial point of view there is, I readily admit, no ground for complaint. I have had, in my time, enough of fighting to have lost the sense of the "fierce joy of battle," and to be quite ready to reap, with bloodless sword, the inglorious but none the less substantial advantages of an adversary's weakness. I am con

tent, and more than content, that after the careful consideration of some three months, the Associated Science of England

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should find itself unable to meet my humble challenge with reply of any kind save-such as is now before me.

Under other circumstances, indeed, and called upon to deal with a less serious. issue, and a less venerable antagonist, I might even have sat down to the dissection of "Experimental Physiology" with something of that "joyous eagerness and delight" which are, as we all know the note of “the true vivisector,” and which, it must be confessed, are not altogether unknown to the operator whose scalpel is unstained by any grislier fluid than simple ink. But there are conditions. which, to any but a very true vivisector indeed, mar sadly the delight of "cutting up" even an antagonist. When that antagonist occupies a position which is in itself a claim to respect; when he bears a name we were once wont to

honour; when, above all, the hand of age stretches out its agis alike over feebleness of matter and offence of tone; then, to a critic of any sensibility the task of dealing with such a work as this becomes singularly ungrateful. It must be performed of course. The cause of Humanity cannot be left to suffer because its opponents seek ignominious shelter under the white hairs of Dr. Owen or because Dr. Owen himself forgets what is due to his own self-respect. But I own I should have been glad if seeing what Dr. Owen's utterance is the duty of reply had fallen to other hands. I will at least endeavour to perform it with the courtesy which, from a man barely entering upon his third quarter-century, is assuredly due to one who has already quitted it—even where he may not expect, or receive, a similar courtesy at his hands.