Experiments in examinations of the Peripheral Distribution of the Fibres of the Posterior Roots of some Spinal Nerves (1893: pp.641-763, 8 Fig., 11 Taf.). + Part II (1898: pp.45-186, 14 Figs., 4 plates).

Sherrington, Sir Charles Scott

Publication Date: 1894

About this Item

Phil. Trans. B., 184 (1893). - London, Harrison & and Sons, 1893, 4°, pp.641-763, Figs., 11 plates; 1898, 4°, XVI, 648 pp., 24 plates; one cardboard with mounted front wrappers, and one full leather volume. First Edition! First part, autographed "With the writers compliments" on mounted front wrapper, first page with minor spottings; 2nd part in an excellent full calf leather volume! "The experiments on reflex action carried out by Pavlov and by Sherrington provided a foundation for the objective treatment of human psychological problems, in particular the theory of behaviourism." PMM: 397, listing Sherrington's book from 1906. "His first steps were to concentrate upon the reflex functions of the cord rather than on the more complex field of the brain; to choose an appropriate experimental animal, the monkey; and to make parallel control and comparison experiments on lower forms to establish the necessary points of anatomical knowledge. Sherrington's basic method was to study simple motor acts which could be made to occur in isolation, correlating his exacting analyses of input-output relations of reflex responses with anatomical and histological data. He used two types of experimental preparations: the classic spinal animal and decerebrate animal. The effects of decerebration had been partially described by many earlier workers, such as Magendie, Bernard, and Flourens, but it was Sherrington who named decerebrate rigidity and, in a fundamental paper of 1898 and later publications, established it as a phenomenon in its own right and as a major tool for examining the reflex functions of the spinal cord, particularly the nature of inhibition. He first used the term "reciprocal innervation" (in the paper offered), read before the Royal Society on 21 January 1897 (2nd. Part); the term he explained, denoted the "particular form of correlation" in which one muscle of an antagonistic couple is relaxed as its mechanical opponent actively contracts.Four months later, as the Royal Society's Croonian lecturer, he proposed his classic definition of riciprocal innervation as that form of of coordination in which "inhibito-motor spinal reflexes occur quite habitually and concurrently with many of the excito-motor." Judith P. Swazey, DSB XII, pp. 402-403- Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) was an eminent English neurophysiologist. His experimental research established many aspects of contemporary neuroscience, including the concept of the spinal reflex as a system involving connected neurons (the "neuron doctrine"), and the ways in which signal transmission between neurons can be potentiated or depotentiated. Sherrington himself coined the word "synapse" to define the connection between two neurons. His book The Integrative Action of the Nervous System is a synthesis of this work, in recognition of which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1932 (along with Edgar Adrian). Rothschuh Nr. 1490: "Rückenmark des Affen ist nicht zur Lokomotion befähigt". (p.45ff.) Rothschuh Nr. 1513: "Stärke des Reflexes geht der Reizstärke parallel".

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Experiments in examinations of the Peripheral Distribution of the Fibres of the Posterior Roots of some Spinal Nerves (1893: pp.641-763, 8 Fig., 11 Taf.). + Part II (1898: pp.45-186, 14 Figs., 4 plates).
• Publication Date: 1894
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Neuroscience