vi Frederic Schiller Lee — Biography. 



He was instrumental in opening the department of physiology at 

 Columbia to post-graduate students in the School of Pure Science, 

 an example which was soon followed by other medical departments, 

 and he was one of the first in this country to offer courses in general 

 physiology. 



His contributions to science have also been mainly in the field 

 of general physiology. During his student life he investigated the 

 action of intermittent pressure, defibrinated blood and certain 

 salts, upon the tone of arteries; and his doctor's dissertation was 

 on the subject of arterial tonicity. At Leipsic he investigated the 

 electrical phenomena of contracting muscle, and showed for the 

 first time that there exists a close parallelism between the electrical 

 and the mechanical phenomena. The former continue nearly or 

 quite throughout the latter, and like the latter are extended and 

 diminished in fatigue. Professor Lee spent several summers at 

 the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Holl, and there made 

 the most exact and detailed study that has yet been made of the 

 role of the parts of the ear in the maintenance of bodily equilibrium, 

 correlating the results with observations on the nerves of the lateral 

 line, and studying the hearing of fishes. He has examined experi- 

 mentally the theory of the phototactic response, and has shown 

 that the distinction hitherto made between the response of organ- 

 isms to the intensity of light and their response to the direction of 

 its rays, is not justified. The phototactic response is conditioned 

 by the intensity of light and the distinction between phototaxis 

 and photopathy, as different forms of irritability, is unwarranted. 

 He has studied the action of alcohol on muscle and has emphasized 

 the fact that in small quantities alcohol is capable of increasing 

 the working power of that tissue. He has studied the phenomena 

 of rigor mortis and the survival of mammalian muscle after somatic 

 death. By the use of very exact experimental methods he has 

 contributed to our knowledge of the phenomena of normal and 

 pathological fatigue and their causes. He has explained the treppe 

 of muscle as being due to the augmenting action of small quantities 

 of certain metabolic products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic 

 acid, the same substances which in larger quantities are depressing 

 or fatiguing to muscle. He ascribes the phenomenon of the sum- 

 mation of stimuli to the same substances, which are produced even 



