Volume 1

A text-book of physiology / by Henry P. Bowditch [and others] ; edited by William H. Howell.

Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: A text-book of physiology / by Henry P. Bowditch [and others] ; edited by William H. Howell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    PREFACE. The collaboration of several teachers in the preparation of an elementary text-book of physiology is unnsual, the almost invariable rule heretofore having been for a single author to write the entire book. It does not seem desirable to attempt a discussion of the relative merits and demerits of the two plans, since the method of collaboration is untried in the teaching of physi- ology, and there is therefore no basis for a satisfactory comparison. It is a fact, however, that many teachers of physiology in this country have not been altogether satisfied with the text-books at their disposal. Some of the more successful older books have not kept pace with the rapid changes in modern physiology, while few, if any, of the newer books have been uniformly satis- factory in their treatment of all parts of this many-sided science. Indeed, the literature of experimental physiology is so great that it would seem to be almost impossible for any one teacher to keep thoroughly informed on all topics. This fact undoubtedly accounts for some of the defects of our present text-books, and it is ho])ed that one of the advantages derived from the col- laboration method is that, owing to the less voluminous literature to be consulted, each author has been enabled to base his elementary account upon a comprehensive knowledge of the part of the subject assigned to him. Those who are acquainted with the difficulty of making a satisfactory elementary presentation of the complex and oftentimes unsettled questions of physiology must agree that authoritative statements and generalizations, such as are fre- quently necessary in text-books if they are to leave any impi-essiou at all upon the student, are usually trustworthy in proportion to the fulness of informa- tion possessed by the writer. Perhaps the most important advantage which may be expected to follow the use of the collaboration method is that the student gains thereby the point of view of a number of teachers. In a measure he reaps the same benefit as would be obtained by following courses of instruction under different teachers. The different standpoints assumed, and the differences in emphasis laid upon the various lines of procedure, chemical, physical, and anatomical, should give the student a better insight into the methods of the science as it exists
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