NA TURE 



Z77 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 1878 



THE JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY 

 Journal of Physiology. Edited, with the co-operation in 

 England of Prof. A. Gamgee, F.R.S., of Manchester, 

 Prof. W. Rutherford, F.R.S., of Edinburgh, Prof. J. 

 Burdon-Sanderson, F.R.S., of London ; and in America 

 of Prof. H. P. Bowditch, of Boston, Prof. H. M. 

 Martin, of Baltimore, and Prof. H. C. Wood, of Phila- 

 delphia, by Michael Foster, M.D., F.R.S. (London : 

 Macmillan and Co.) 



THERE is perhaps no science which is making more 

 rapid advances than that of physiology, and which 

 is at the same time so interesting to general readers, as 

 well as to those engaged in its special prosecution. A 

 knowledge of the processes of life has such a close rela- 

 tion to individual health and happiness that it ought to 

 be more or less taught to every child at school, and all 

 thinking men must note its advances with interest. So 

 swift is the progress of physiological science, that it has 

 necessitated for this journal a mode of publication, now 

 becoming common in Germany, but of which this is 

 perhaps the first example in this country. Instead of 

 appearing at regular intervals, the Journal of Physiology 

 is published in numbers, which are issued at periods 

 varying from two to three months, according to the supply 

 of material sent in to the editors. From four to six 

 numbers will form a volume of about 500 pages. The 

 advantage of this mode of publication is that it prevents 

 a discovery made by one man from being forestalled by 

 another whose observations, although really made later 

 in point of time, might sometimes obtain priority under 

 the ordinary method of publication. 



The title-page of the Journal shows that it is to some 

 extent an international" work, three American co-operating 

 with three English professors, under the able editorship of 

 Dr. Michael Foster. The first numbers contain contribu- 

 tions from the Continent of Europe as well as from Great 

 Britain and America, one of the most interesting articles 

 in them being contributed by a German, Prof. Kiihne, of 

 Heidelberg. The range of subjects is very wide, and 

 includes papers on almost every function of the body — 

 innervation, motion, circulation, respiration, and secre- 

 tion. Some time ago an account was given in NATURE 

 of Kiihne's interesting discoveries regarding visual 

 purple, that pigment in the eye which is so susceptible 

 to the action of light. In his present paper he takes up 

 the other pigments of the retina, which are either not 

 affected at all, or only to a slight extent, by exposure to 

 light. He has succeeded in discovering and isolating 

 from a bird's retina no less than three distinct pigments 

 of great stability, and he gives in one paper the mode of 

 preparation, properties, and spectroscopic appearances 

 of these substances. In the same paper he simply men- 

 tions the black pigment of the retina, which he regards 

 as exceedingly stable, and little altered by light ; but 

 while the number of the Journal in which his paper is 

 contained was still passing through the press he made 

 the discovery that this pigment does not resist the action 

 of light so perfectly as he at first supposed, and is slowly 

 altered by exposure. This leads him to remark that " if 

 Vol. XVIII. — No. 458 



one considers the extremely widespread occurrence in 

 the animal kingdom of the black pigment of the eye and 

 other similarly stable pigments, it is scarcely possible to 

 repress the idea that these, in addition to visual purple, 

 also represent visual excitants, or so-called visual sub- 

 stances, and are intended to be decomposed by light 

 during life, and to yield those substances which stimulate 

 chemically the terminal apparatus of the visual organ." 

 He also calls attention to the remarkable circumstance 

 that the pigments of a bird's retina he has discovered 

 are so mixed with oil globules that the colours 

 in the cones of the retina represent exactly half the 

 spectral colours, viz., from red to yellowish green, so that 

 with their complementary colours they yield all the 

 colours of the spectrum. He also observed that the three 

 pigments are most readily decomposed by blue light, less 

 by green, and not at all by red. Comment is unnecessary 

 on the importance of this paper in reference to vision. 



In a preliminary note Mr. Gaskell contributes some 

 interesting observations on the vaso-motor nerves of 

 striated muscles. He had previously found that irrita- 

 tion of the motor nerve of a muscle dilated its vessels, 

 and increased the flow of blood through it, at the same 

 time that contraction was produced so that fresh supplies 

 of nutriment and oxygen were supplied to the muscle by 

 the blood at the same moment that it was stimulated to 

 work. He has now shown that the same phenomena 

 may be produced refiexly by irritating a sensory nerve, 

 and that the dilatation of the vessels will occur, and the 

 blood will flow more freely through the muscle even when 

 it is prevented from moving by paralysing the motor 

 nerves with curare. On then irritating a sensory nerve, 

 the current of blood is increased as usual in the paralysed 

 muscle, which would have contracted under ordinary cir- 

 cumstances, and thus proof is afforded that the vaso- 

 dilating nerves are distinct from the motor nerves of the 

 muscle. 



Mr. Priestley gives a full account of the literature 

 regarding the pulsations of the lymph-hearts in the frog, 

 and he details a number of experiments which demon- 

 strate several new facts, as well as confirm the. observa- 

 tions of other physiologists. 



In a joint paper, Dr. Gamgee and Mr. Priestley criticise 

 Tarchanoff's statement that each vagus nerve can set in 

 action the whole inhibitory apparatus contained in the 

 heart, and that when this apparatus, whose function is to 

 lessen or stop the cardiac beats, has been exhausted by 

 irritation of one vagus no stimulation of the other can 

 stop the cardiac pulsations. Their own experiments 

 show that even when one vag^s has been exhausted, 

 irritation of the other will still stop the heart, and even 

 when both are exhausted the inhibitory apparatus is still 

 active, so that the pulsations of the heart may even then 

 be arrested by galvanism apphed to the venous sinus. 

 They therefore conclude that the inhibitory apparatus in 

 the heart is match less easily exhausted by stimulation 

 than the vagi, and that it may still retain its power over 

 the heart although both vagi are so exhausted that they 

 will no longer convey to it a stimulus applied to them. 



The question as to whether the apex of the frog's heart 

 contains within itself ganglia which will keep up its 

 rhythmical motion has lately been the subject of lively 

 debate, but Dr. Bowditch brings forward a number of 



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