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Book Reviews |
The soups and the sparks
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These two books describe, in very different styles, the key individuals and scientific discoveries that were involved in one of the great debates of neuroscience—how they interacted with each other, and the trajectory of their science. The debate under discussion is that of how nerve cells communicate, identified as a fundamental scientific problem by the end of the 19th century. In 1877, DuBois Reymond wrote, considering how nerves cause muscle contraction, ‘Of known natural processes that might pass on excitation, only two are, in my opinion, worth talking about—either there exists at the boundary of the contractile substance a stimulatory secretion ... or the phenomenon is electrical in nature’. Early in the 20th century, two key advances were made: nerve action potentials were first recorded by the use of the string galvanometer; and the ability of chemicals to mimic the functions of autonomic nerves was discovered. Thus, the stage was
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