On the mammalian nervous system : its functions, and their localisation determined by an electrical method / by Francis Gotch and Victor Horsley.

  • Gotch, Francis, 1853-1913.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the mammalian nervous system : its functions, and their localisation determined by an electrical method / by Francis Gotch and Victor Horsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    We cdinnienccd our reseai'ches in 1888, and ])ublished a preliminary account of the same as stated in the introduction to the present paper. Moreover, we demonstrated our method in 1889 before the Physiological Society, and further, at the Tnternational Physiological Congress, held in Basle, in September, 1889, we made a general communication on the method, and showed a complete experiment to tlie physiologists there assembled. An abstract of our paper in the ' Proceedings of the Royal Society,' was published in the ' Centralblatt flir Physiologic,' 1889, and the account of the demonstration at Basle was published in October, 1889, not only in the ' Centralblatt fur Physiologic,' but in tlie ' Progres Medical,' 1889, and elsewhere. We have published, on the occasion of a priority discussion presently to be alluded to, in the ' Centralblatt fiir Physiologic,' 1891, the various publications we have made of our method a,rranged in chronological order. It was not until the close of 1890 that we learned that the galvanometric method was being employed abroad. On the 8th November, 1890, there appeared in the 'Centralblatt fiir Physiologic,' a paper by Dr. A. Beck, of Cracow, who, ignorai;it apparently of our ])ublications and demonstrations, described the galvanometric method, and pointed out the value of it in determining the localisation of centripetal or afferent nerve function in the brain and spinal cord. This paper, however, was really but an abstract of a full paper which was presented to the Academy of Science in Cracow, in 1890, a copy of which we owe to tlie kind courtesy of Professor Cybulski, and in which is given a brief reference to the Basle demonstra- tion, but no reference to our publications in 1888, or to Professor Biedermann's abstract of the same in the ' Centralblatt flir Physiologic,' 1889. The appearance of this paper produced a priority reclamation by Professor Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, of Vienna, pubhshed in the 'Centralblatt fiir Physiologic,'on the 6th of December, 1890. In this communication Fleischl showed that, as long ago as the 7th of November, 1883, he had deposited in the archives of the Imperial Academy of Science in Vienna a sealed letter, in wliich he announced that he had employed the galvanometric method for the same purpose, vide infra, as Beck and with the same details. Fleischl, in this reclamation, does not mention any more than Beck, the prior investigations of Caton, or our publications and demonstrations of the last three years. Although Fleischl appears to have independently thought of employing the galvano- meter as an index of functional activity in the nerve centre, when it is the seat of centripetal or afferent disturbance, his method of recording his idea in a sealed note, discounts the credit that otherwise might fall to him. All these authors have dealt with the employment of the galvanometer as an index of the changes going on in the nerve centre, i.e., nerve corpuscles, when that nerve centre is directly connected with the instrument. We will allude directly to the results obtained by Beck and by Fleischl, but we wish to point out that from our own observations made in the same way, we are not at present satisfied that the basis of these researches is entirely trustworthy (see Chapter IX.), and that they deal with but one point in this extensive subject. So far as we are aware, we were the first to determine by use of the electrical
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