Influence on American Physiology. 



27 



accepted and is known as the Kronecker-Meltzer theory of deglu- 

 tition. Meltzer had attracted Kronecker's attention while a 

 student in his course. Out of this acquaintanceship developed 

 an invitation to engage in a research and eventually a warm friend- 

 ship between the two men that lasted throughout life. Meltzer's 

 career was thus determined while still a student of medicine. 

 Kronecker's influence attracted him to physiology and set his 

 feet in the paths of research. The investigation in which they 

 collaborated was important and original — just what part each 

 contributed it is not now possible to discover, but it is interesting 

 to find that this initial venture into research furnished a motif 

 which can be detected recurring again and again in Meltzer's 

 subsequent work. A companion paper upon "Die Irradiationen 

 des Schluckcentrums und ihre Bedeutung" was published by 

 Meltzer alone in 1883. It is a very suggestive paper on account of 

 the careful analysis it contains of the far-reaching and curious 

 effects in the central nervous system of the act of swallowing and 

 also because in it Meltzer announces certain views upon the im- 

 portance of the inhibitory processes which subsequently formed 

 the basis of his theory of inhibition, and remained with him 

 throughout life as a sort of compass by which to set his course on 

 his voyages of discovery. He calls attention in this work to the 

 fact that reflex excitation of the inspiratory muscles is accom- 

 panied by reflex inhibition of the expiratory muscles and vice 

 versa, and he goes on to make the suggestion that a similar re- 

 lationship must prevail in the case of all antagonistic muscles such 

 as the extensors and flexors of the limbs. Some ten years later 

 Sherrington gave the necessary demonstration that this interrela- 

 tion does hold with the muscular antagonists, that the contrac- 

 tion of the one is accompanied by the inhibition of the other and 

 he designated this relationship under the term of "reciprocal 

 innervation." Meltzer meanwhile had been accumulating in- 

 stances of this combined action of excitation and inhibition, but 

 he neglected at that period to apply a distinctive name to this 

 kind of correlated activity. There can be no doubt that when 

 it is possible to label an idea with an appropriate designation its 

 currency in the scientific world is greatly facilitated. In his paper 

 on "The Self-Regulation of Respiration" read before the Ameri- 



