XXX11 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



he discussed the homologies of the cranial and spinal nerves, and returned to 

 this subject in a paper published a few years later. For his work on the 

 nervous system he was awarded the Marshall Hall Prize of the Eoyal Medical 

 and Chirurgical Society in 1888, and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the 

 Society. 



In 1890, the Mzam of Hyderabad supplied funds to a Commission for the 

 investigation of the cause of death under chloroform — the second which he 

 had supported. The Commission reported that death was due to an action of 

 the respiratory centre, and that if the respiration were carefully attended to 

 it was unnecessary to pay any attention to the pulse. These conclusions 

 were directly opposed to common belief based both on experimental and 

 clinical observation. One of the members of the Commission asked Gaskell 

 to criticise their Eeport. Gaskell arranged with Dr. Shore to make a joint 

 experimental enquiry. Gaskell and Shore, employing various methods, 

 notably that of cross circulation from one animal to another, brought forward 

 evidence, which was generally regarded as conclusive, that chloroform had a 

 direct weakening action on the heart. Their paper, published in 1893, 

 checked a tendency to regard the respiration as the only factor to be 

 considered in administering chloroform. It was a useful piece of work, but 

 it gave Gaskell the only enemy he ever made. 



This investigation was a side track from the main line of the work which 

 Gaskell had been pursuing for some years. His morphological studies on the 

 homologies of the cranial and spinal nerves had led him to consider the 

 problem of the origin of the nervous system in vertebrates, and this again led 

 him to a theory of the origin of vertebrates to which he gave nearly all his 

 time in later years. Dr. Gadow has been kind enough to write the following 

 account of this part of Gaskell's researches : — 



" Gaskell's physiological research has always been to a considerable extent 

 on the morphological side, and this combination of the sister sciences culminated 

 in his enquiry into the origin of vertebrates. He was drawn to this at 

 present hopelessly difficult problem neither by accident nor design but by the 

 complete failure of various morphological friends to account for certain 

 structures the understanding of which was necessary for his research. He 

 therefore determined to find out for himself, and thus it has come to pass that 

 a man between 30 and 40 years of age, M.D. of Cambridge and a physiologist of 

 renown, devoted about 25 years of his life to essentially morphological studies, 

 more than — in the nature of things — applies to some of his rather bitter 

 scientific opponents. Moreover, entering the new field quite unbiassed, his 

 critical mind enabled him, when studying for instance the best comprehensive 

 text-books on embryology, to discover the weak sides of that discipline. It was 

 not a question of picking out what suited him ; on the contrary there was 

 hardly a point — be it the homologies of the germinal layers, the occurrence of 

 some obscure feature like Eeissner's fibre, or some Silurian fossil, which he 

 did not take often infinite pains to examine into. Frequently he enlisted 

 friendly help, as in the case of the digestive properties of the lamprey's skin. 



