Abstract
CLASSICAL-afWorny, the study of visible structure for structurw sake, has long since exhausted itself (and others) But a new generation of anatomists is showing us that, when morphological observations are rrelated with parallel biochemical and biophysical analyses and with considerations of function, profitable advances may result, and that, handled in this way, anatomy has still much to contribute to biological science. Prof. J. Z. Young, in his inaugural lecture as professor of anatomy at University College, London, developed this theme and put forward some stimulating suggestions for future progress in anatomical research. He deplored the rigid departmental segregation of anatomists, physiologists, biochemists, pharmacologists and so on, which so usually exists in medical schools, and urged that all should regard themselves primarily as human biologists. Each worker must necessarily practise his own specialized technique; but he should endeavour to correlate his findings with those derived from other, and often widely differing, techniques, and so view his problem from all possible angles. Prof. Young's own work on the degeneration and regeneration of nerve, in which a correlation of histological with physico-chemical findings led to an entirely new concept of the nerve fibre, is a case in point. He gives a timely warning to biologists against a too mechanistic interpretation of their subject. Living structures show an organisation or pattern on a higher level than that ordinarily regarded as physical or chemical; consequently a purely physical or chemical approach is generally inadequate for the total handling of a biological problem.
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The New Anatomy. Nature 158, 907 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158907b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158907b0