The science of physiology, which is concerned with the normal functions of the animal body, is the basis of medicine and surgery, which are concerned with the abnormal functions of the human body.
Until recently in the medical schools of England and Scotland, physiology was known as the "institutes of medicine," which literally means the foundations of medicine.
Physiology is the keystone in the arch of medical and surgical knowledge. On its security depends the security of the superstructure of medicine as a science.
Dean Lyon of the University of Minnesota has aptly described the relation of the preclinical sciences to clinical medicine in the following words:
I saw that if I were intelligently to discuss the relation between laboratory sciences and the work of the clinical years, I needed to know something about the clinical years. So I followed a master of diagnosis in his day's work. I saw