Lectures on the sympathetic innervation of striated muscle by the late John Irvine Hunter : delivered at University College, London by G. Elliot Smith.

  • John Irvine Hunter
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on the sympathetic innervation of striated muscle by the late John Irvine Hunter : delivered at University College, London by G. Elliot Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    gations in many directions—anatomical, physiological, pharmacological, and clinical. This much the compiler of these reports gathered in conversation with Hunter, who, unfortunately, had not prepared any manuscript of the three lectures he had intended to give. It had been his intention, as was his usual custom, to speak without notes, and apart from these conversations and the large series of lantern slides and cinematographic films, he has left nothing in the form of lectures. Yet the subject is so important in its scientific bearings, and the need for some explicit guide to surgeons is SO' urgent, that the attempt has been made to do what Hunter had intended to do, and to publish the reports. The compiler has done nothing more than select passages from Hunter’s published and unpublished works and endeavour to give a connected and consistent account of his results. In addition to the three memoirs published in the Medical Journal of Australia (January 26th, June 14th, and September 27th, 1924), in Brain (August, 1924), and in Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics (December, 1924), the compiler has in his hands the manuscripts of three unpub¬ lished memoirs of Hunter’s on this subject, as well as the shorthand reports of discussions in which he took part at Brooklyn and Philadelphia in October. Moreover, Hunter had intended to make use of the information provided by Orbeli and his collaborators, of which an account was given by Dr. W. Horsley Gantt in the British Medical Journal of September 20th, 1924 (p. 533). While the statements made in the following pages are Hunter’s, any faults of arrangement or of literary form are to be attributed fx> the compiler. Discussing the problem which Hunter sets out to solve in these lectures Pekelharing (Nederl. Tijdschr. v. Geneesk., September, 1913) twelve years ago wrote: “The most direct investigation of the mechanism of muscular contrac¬ tion will be afforded by microscopic study: but, unfortun¬ ately, we must wait for a happy inspiration to reveal the road to follow.” The compiler of these lectures is convinced that Hunter has got the “ happy inspiration.” Hunter was in the midst of his experimental work when he received the invitation from the American College of Surgeons to deliver the Murphy Oration in New York. He and the team of collaborators who were inspired by his enthusiasm were preparing to investigate a host of problems—anatomical, physiological, pharmacological, and