Sir,

Sir Russell Brain's oration to the Medical Society of London, which you published on May 16, is in essence a plea for the outlook which he has summed up in the statement: "Medicine is a branch of biology, and I believe that the philosophy should be based upon a re-examination of the conception of the living organism as a whole." Sir Russell Brain in this statement gives point to the fact, too readily overlooked by investigators, that the human creature developed in its growth and behaviour before the coming of medicine, and that it is in the growth and behaviour of the creature that we must seek for that integrative working principle which, to quote Sir Russell Brain, operates as "a dynamic transaction which itself integrates the activities of the organs."

The method which enabled Mr. F. Matthias Alexander to discover a directive influence capable of guiding and controlling the living self, so that it operated as an integrated whole and thus as a mechanism working under the influence of what might be called a "dynamic transaction," was the direct experimental observation of the whole living man working as a mechanism in his everyday environment. It is an indication of the limiting influence of specialisation and professionalism that the essential appropriateness of Mr. Alexander's method still awaits recognition by those very persons who profess that what they most desire for men's use and profit are just those very consequences which followed from Mr. Alexander's experiments.