ABSTRACT
In the previous section it has been pointed out that during the eighteenth century the experimental method was applied with great success both in animal and in vegetable biology; names such as Haller and Spallanzani, Hales and Ingenhousz are sufficient proof of this. During the reign of romantic natural philosophy, conditions were different; the representatives of that school, who imagined that they could solve all the riddles of existence by speculation, deeply scorned experiment, which they considered led to nothing but fruitless artifice. Indeed, the physiological works which saw the light during this epoch are for the most part purely speculative or else devoted to morphological problems. Gradually, however, reason came into its own even in this sphere; the immense success which the experimental method brought to contemporary physics and chemistry induced attempts at applying that method also to biology. And this all the more so as during the immediately preceding period eminent scientists had begun to apply themselves with considerable success to the study of the chemical composition of living organisms. A glance at the development that had taken place in that branch of chemistry may therefore not be out of place in this connexion.
