278 MESSRS. P. GOTCH AND V. HORSLBY 



We commenced our researches in 1888, and published 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 International 

 Physiological Congress, held in Basle, in September, 1889, we made a general 

 communication on the method, and showed a complete experiment to the physiologists 

 there assembled. An abstract of our paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 

 was published in the Centralblatt ftir Physiologic, 1889, and the account of the 

 demonstration at Basle was published in October, 1889, not only in the Centralblatt 

 ftir Physiologie, but in the Progres Medical, 1889, and elsewhere. We have 

 published, on the occasion of a priority discussion presently to be alluded to, in the 

 Centralblatt fur Physiologic, 1891, the various publications we have made of our 

 method arranged 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 fur Physiologie, a paper by Dr. 

 A. BECK, of Cracow, who, ignorant apparently of our publications 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 1 890, a copy of which we owe to the 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 Physiologie, 1889. The appearance of this 

 paper produced a priority reclamation by Professor ERNST FLEISCHL VON MARXOW, of 

 Vienna, published in the Centralblatt fur Physiologie, 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 which 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 



