xxviii 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



begun in the laboratory. This led him by a series of steps, which were 

 perfectly logical, but impossible to foresee, from point to point of scientific 

 enquiry up to his theory of the origin of vertebrates. 



Soon after his return to England in 1875, Gaskell married Miss Catherine 

 Sharpe Parker, a daughter of Mr. R. A. Parker, of the firm of Messrs. 

 Sharpe, Parker, and Co., solicitors, by whom he had one son, Dr. J. F. 

 Gaskell, and four daughters, two of whom survive him. He settled in 

 Grantchester, about a mile and a half from Cambridge, and in the Cambridge 

 Physiological Laboratory he carried further the investigation on .the innerva- 

 tion of the blood vessels of striated muscle. He found (1877), amongst other 

 facts, that stimulation of the nerve supplying the mylohyoid muscle of 

 the frog caused considerable and constant dilatation of the blood vessels, 

 although contraction of the muscle itself was prevented by curare. This was 

 the most decisive instance known at the time of such action in a purely 

 muscular structure. It did not, however, settle the question of the occur- 

 rence of vaso-dilator fibres in the nerves of skeletal muscle, the discussion 

 of which was carried on by Heidenhain and others. 



From the behaviour of the arteries under nervous stimulation he passed 

 to the investigation of the behaviour of the small arteries and of the heart 

 with varying reaction of the blood, and, finding that a small addition of 

 alkali increased the tone of both, and that a small addition of acid decreased 

 it, he suggested that, besides the nervous control of the circulation, there was 

 also a chemical control in each organ and tissue by the products set free in 

 activity, so that, for example, the contraction of the muscle by setting free 

 acid led to an increased flow of blood through it. The suggestion was not 

 entirely new, but it was wider in range than any of its kind previously made 

 and rested on more solid facts. This work directed his attention to the 

 heart, and for the next four or five years he devoted his time to the questions 

 of the innervation of the heart, and the cause of the heart beat. With these 

 questions others were busily engaged, notably Engelmann and Heidenhain. 



In the early seventies it was universally held that the beat of the heart 

 was due to the nerve cells present in it, and that it was initiated by the nerve 

 cells of the sinus venosus. There were very varied views as to the method 

 of working of the nervous mechanism, especially as to the parts played by the 

 nerve cells of the septum of the auricle, and the nerve cells of the base of the 

 ventricle. As it became more widely recognised that parts of the heart 

 which had no discernible nerve cells could contract rhythmically, it was felt 

 that the nervous theory did not account for the whole of the phenomena. 

 Moreover, some of the pharmacological results could not be satisfactorily 

 explained on the theory as then put forward. But no one had any more 

 satisfactory explanation to offer. 



The question of the action of the nerve cells in the heart was part of the 

 general question of the functions of the peripheral ganglia. In 1869, 

 Engelmann argued that the peristaltic contraction of the ureters did not 

 depend on nerve cells and that the contraction was conducted from one 



