Alex Hill

The Body at Work Alex Hill

Physiology is the science of the body at work. It is the study of life. Anatomy records how plants and animals are constructed. It maps and measures. Physiology ascertains what they do, endeavours to explain how they do it, and conjectures why. A knowledge of structure is essential to the right understanding of function; but the physiologist does not contemplate structure with a view to divining possibilities of action. He has no interest in structure as such. To him it is a matter of perfect indifference whether the tendon of a muscle is at its origin or its insertion. He would rather not know which end of the muscle terminates in a tendon. It is waste of his time to notice such a fact, save for the negative, the protective value of the information. If he did not know how the muscle and tendon are related, he might possibly imagine the muscle as doing something of which it is incapable. Observers of living things are often credited with studying structure with a view to determining function.