Sir John Scott Bur don- Sanderson, Bart. xv 



capillary electrometer, greatly improving its construction and developing 

 a method by means of which the graphic records of its well-known displace- 

 ment could be interpreted with accuracy. It thus became possible to 

 construct, from the actual photographic records, other derived curves which 

 should faithfully display the variations in the potential difference of a 

 tissue even when these variations were of very brief duration. 



The whole method was elaborated by Burdon-Sanderson with scrupulous 

 attention to accuracy of detail ; he left it the most exact method of its kind 

 employed in this or any other country, and the utility of the technique has 

 now received ample acknowledgment from all those who are engaged in 

 investigations upon the electromotive phenomena displayed by excitable 

 tissues. Others, inspired by his example and encouraged by his help, have 

 applied the method with success for the elucidation of the electromotive 

 changes occurring in nervous and other tissues, including those which are 

 found in the electrical organs of fishes. As regards the last-named struc- 

 tures, Burdon-Sanderson himself visited Arcachon in 1886, St. Andrew's in 

 1887 and Plymouth in 1888, in order to investigate the electrical organs of 

 fishes, and published, in conjunction with F. Gotch, two papers upon the 

 electrical organ of the Skate in the ' Journal of Physiology.' 



The results of the investigations upon muscle are given in the papers 

 which he published in the ' Journal of Physiology,' and a comprehensive 

 account of the work and of his conceptions as to the excitatory process 

 in this structure, is set forth in the third of his Croonian lectures. 



This lecture, delivered in 1899, was entitled " The Eelation of Motion in 

 Animals and Plants to the Electrical Phenomena associated with it." It 

 deals first with the technique by means of which he endeavoured to obtain 

 precise information and then sets forth the main results obtained by its 

 employment in Dionsea and in striped muscle. The electrical response is 

 described in various forms of muscular contraction such as twitch, tetanus 

 and reflex activity, also in the peculiar condition produced by veratria. In 

 summarising the indications which the phenomena seemed to him to afford, 

 he stated that " in striated muscle the primary effect of every excitation is 

 a process of oxidation having its seat at the excited part. It may be 

 surmised that this consists of two stages, namely, liberation of previously 

 intramolecular oxygen, and actual oxidation." He further concludes that 

 " the monophasic variation may be taken as the type from which all other 

 forms of response to stimulation may be derived, either by repetition, pro- 

 longation or interference." 



An interesting point for electro-physiologists is associated with the con- 

 cluding sentence, which affirms that he believes the " muscle current " to be 

 " the manifestation of processes which have their seat at the surface of 

 contact between electrode and living muscle " ; he thus definitely adopted 

 the view which is termed " prae-existent " as opposed to the " alteration " 

 conceptions of Hermann. The work upon reflex muscular activity was 

 continued almost up to the time of his death ; a brief note relating to 



