AN INTRODUCTION ΤΟ HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY BY AUGUSTUS D. WALLER, M.D., F.R.S. LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY AT ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCHOCL, LONDON SECOND EDITION LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1893 All rights reserved F34 W19 1893 TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER AUGUSTUS WALLER, M.D., F.R.S. 1816-1870 Emigration of Leucocytes, 1846 Degeneration and Regeneration of Nerve, 1850 Cilio-spinal Region, 1851 Vaso-constrictor Action of Sympathetic, 1853 46926 PREFACE I have written this book with a distinct consciousness that physiology in a medical school is, in conjunction with anatomy, the introduction to medicine and to surgery of those who will be engaged in general practice,' and I hope that the volume may be found to justify its title of Human Physiology' with reference to the position that the subject should occupy in medical education, as the junction to which anatomy, chemistry, and physics converge, and from which the principles of medicine and of surgery diverge. Physiology does not consist in a knowledge of recondite phenomena, of difficult names, and of complicated instruments. It should fundamentally consist in the living mental picture of what the great organs below a man's skin are like, what they are doing, how they can be examined, what happens when they are not working properly, how their actions hang together, how they may be influenced for good and for evil. But physiology, as it is written, contains more than this, and, in sparing measure, it is well that the Institutes of Medicine' should not be restricted to the visibly useful,' or to the obriously utilisable.' A short course of practical physiology is of the utmost value to the student of medicine, not merely because it puts into his hands the methods of everyday medical chemistry and physics, but because it helps to correct that credulous bias or primitive suggestibility' which is a physiological property of the human brain, and only too apt to be fostered by unmitigated bookwork. Practical physiology is the indispensable adjuvant and corrective of book-physiology, because it brings words to the touchstone of physical instruments |