44^ 



NATURE 



[December 2, 1920 



Prof. Sherrington's Work on the Nervous System. 

 By Dr. H. D. Adrian. 



PROF. C. S. SHKRRliNGTON, who vviis 

 elected president of the Royal Society 

 at the anniversary meetinj,' on November 30, is 

 well known as the leadinfj authority on the physio- 

 logy of the central 



cells and nerve-fibres connected, on one hand 

 with the sense-organs, and on the other with 

 the different muscles and glands. A disturbance 

 of equilibrium initiated in the sense-organs travels 



rapidly along the 



nervous system. 

 The guiding prin- 

 ciples of his re- 

 searches are to be 

 found in his book 

 on "The Integra- 

 tive Action of the 

 Nervous System," 

 based on the text 

 of the Silliman lec- 

 tures which he de- 

 livered in Yale 

 University in 1906. 

 This book gathers 

 up the arguments 

 of the most im- 

 portant of his 

 papers on the 

 physiology of the 

 nervous system, 

 and it is safe to 

 say that no other 

 book in any lan- 

 guage has had 

 such an immediate 

 and profoun d 

 effect on our con- 

 ceptions of neuro 

 logy. 



The integrative 

 function of the 

 nervous system 

 has long been 

 recognised. A n 

 animal which has 

 attained some de- 

 gree of complexity 

 is made up of dif- 

 ferent groups of 

 cells forminp- the 

 muscles, glands, 

 supporting frame 

 work, etc., and 

 each ff r o u p is 

 specially adapted 



to carry out certain functions. If these 

 different cell groups are- to work harmoni- 

 ously together, their activities must be co- 

 ordinated with one another and with the 

 environment of the organism, so that a change 

 in environment will cause a response in the animal 

 as a whole, and not merely a series of discon- 

 nected responses in the different active tissues. 

 This integration is carried out by the nervous 

 system, which forms a complex network of nerve- 

 NO. 2666, VOL. 106] 



i 



Prof. Charles Scott Shkkkington, President or thb Rov,m 



sensory nerves to 

 the c-entral mass 

 of nervous tissue 

 in the spinal cord 

 and brain. Every 

 moment an im- 

 mense number of 

 impulses are enter- 

 ing the central 

 nervous system 

 from the million or 

 more s e ns o r >■ 

 fibres connected to 

 the receptive 

 organs, and other 

 impulses are con- 

 tinually passing 

 out down the 

 motor nerves to 

 the muscles. Any 

 change in the en- 

 vironment will 

 modify the inflow 

 of sensory im- 

 pulses and call for 

 some change in 

 the activity of the 

 animal, and the 

 whole function of 

 the central nerv- 

 ous system con- 

 sists in adjusting 

 the passage of im- 

 pulses through it 

 so that the total 

 effect produced by 

 the outgoing im- 

 pulses to the active 

 tissues bears an 

 appropriate rela- 

 tion to the total 

 effect of the in- 

 going s e n s o r y 

 impulses. The 

 aim of the neuro- 

 logist is, tlierefore, to discover the means by 

 which this adjustment of the flow of impulses is 

 carried out. There are, roughly, three main lines 

 of research bv which the problem has been ap- 

 proached. The first method consists in tracing 

 the connections of the different fibres and cell 

 groups in the nervous system, so as to map out 

 the path by which the impulses must travel. The 

 second attempts to find out the contribution made 

 by different parts of the nervous system (e.g. the 



