September 24, 19 14] 



NATURE 



93 



Western Australia mention must be made of the 

 •excellent arrang^ements for those visitors who 

 were desirous of seeing- as much as possible of 

 the State but were not taking- the official botanical, 

 g-eolog-ical, and zoological excursions. Mr. 

 Catton Grasby piloted Mr. Golding^ round the 

 agricultural districts. Mr. King-smill and Mr. 

 Battye arranged a week's programme of short 

 local excursions. The Government very kindly 

 arranged a particularly interesting excursion to 

 the timber district at Big Brook and ran a special 

 train, the Premier himself making one of the 

 party. Prof. Ross guided a number of visitors 

 over the wireless telegraphic station, and Prof. 

 AVhitfeld conducted a small party to Kalgoorlie. 

 Special arrangements were made for the over- 

 seas party travelling by the Orvieto and only 

 having a few hours in Western Australia. The 

 Mayor of Perth entertained the party to luncheon, 

 after motor drives had been taken round Perth. 

 This completed the official visit to Western Aus- 

 tralia. \^'hilst this is being written upon the 

 Orvieto en route for Adelaide the party is an- 

 ■xiouslv waiting for news of the trouble at home, 

 a few tragic rumours having just reached us as 

 we left Perth for the steamer. W. J. Dakin. 



DR. W. H. GASKELL, F.R.S. 



DR. GASKELL'S unexpected death comes as a 

 shock to his many friends. A few weeks 

 ago he was in full enjoyment of life. His sixty- 

 seven years were lightly borne, and the ailments 

 inseparable from his years had little effect on his 

 luoyant nature. He was actively engaged in 

 )utting in book form his views on the sympathetic 

 iystem, and no one doubted that he had years of 

 jarely abated vigour before him. He died on 



iptember 7 after a short illness. 



Gaskell entered Trinity Colleee, Cambridge. In 

 1869 he was placed among the Wranglers in the 

 Vlathematical Tripos, and in 1872 he took honours 

 Rn the Natural Science Tripos. He proceeded 

 to a medical degree, and under the influence of 

 Michael Foster began research in physiology, 

 ^arl Ludwig's laboratory in Leipzig was the 

 >rincipal centre of physiological research, and 

 laskell went to Leipzig. L'nder Ludwig's direc- 

 ion he investigated the vaso-dilator fibres of 

 luscle. The resultant paper is one of the classical 

 rorks on the subject. 



On returning to Cambridge Gaskell took up 

 le study of the mechanism by which the several 

 jarts of the heart are coordinated in the sequence 

 )f contractions which make up the heart-beat. 

 At this time the dominant — though not unques- 

 tioned — theory referred the sequence of con- 

 tractions to the activity of separate groups of 

 motor and inhibitory nerve-cells placed in the 

 heart itself. Gaskell at first supported this hypo- 

 thesis with certain modifications, but as the result 

 of later investigations chiefly on the heart of the 

 tortoise, he substituted for it the theory, now 

 almost universally adopted, that the conduction 

 of impulses from one part of the heart to the next 



NO. 2343, VOL. 94] 



is by means of a specialised muscular tissue. .\t 

 approximately the same time Engelmann con- 

 tested the theory of nervous control, and the 

 modern views of the mechanism of the heart-beat 

 are inseparably connected with the names of 

 Gaskell and Engelmann. Gaskell's work was full 

 of new and important observations. Thus he 

 described how, by lowering the conductivity of 

 the tissue between the auricle and the ventricle, 

 the ventricle only responded to ever\^ second and 

 third contraction of the auricle. On the in- 

 vention of the string galvanometer by Einthoven, 

 the "heart-block," described by Gaskell, explained 

 certain irregularities observed in the cardiac 

 tracings of man, and became of fundamental 

 clinical imjKJrtance. 



In connection with the foregoing work, Gaskell 

 investigated the extrinsic nervous supply of the 

 heart, i.e. its innervation by the vagus and sym- 

 pathetic nerves. He was thus led to his next 

 great line of work, that on the sympathetic 

 nervous system. On this question there were a 

 vast number of observations, but for the most 

 part they were disconnected, and few generalised 

 statements had any currency. A distinction of 

 white and grey rami connecting in the mammal 

 the spinal nerves with the sympathetic had long 

 been known, and Onodi and pthers had described 

 the absence of white rami in the cervical, lower 

 lumbar, and sacral regions. The white rami were 

 known to be composed chiefly of myelinated ner\-es 

 and the grey rami of non-myelinated nerxes. 

 Gaskell's observations were chiefly microscopical. 

 He noted that the roots of the spinal nerves at 

 their origin from the spinal cord had no non- 

 myelinated nerve fibres, and from this and other 

 facts he deduced as a broad general statement 

 that the outflow of nerve fibres from the spinal 

 cord to the sympathetic chain took place solely, 

 or almost solely, in the regions in which white 

 rami were present, i.e. in the thoracic and upper 

 lumbar regions. In Gaskell's paper there are 

 other generalisations w-ith regard to the sym- 

 pathetic and allied nervous systems, but it would 

 take too much space to discuss them here. It 

 must suffice to say that Gaskell was the first to 

 attempt to treat the innervation of the blood- 

 vessels and the viscera in a comprehensive 

 manner. 



Gaskell's study of the relation of the central 

 nervous system to the sympathetic nervous 

 system in vertebrates led him to consider the 

 relation of both to the nervous system of inverte- 

 brates, and he passed from the more special 

 domain of physiology to that of morphology. He 

 arrived at conclusions diff'ering essentially from 

 that held by morphologists, and the remaining 

 years of his life were mainly occupied in advo- 

 cating his views and working them out in detail. 



Taking Gaskell's work as a whole, it appears 

 that the main bent of his mind was for generalisa- 

 tion. It was scarcely possible for him to make 

 an experiment without extending the conclusions 

 to be derived from it to a number of other pheno- 

 mena. It was both his virtue and his defect. 

 His influence on physiological conceptions has 



