Book Note: Essays in the History of the Physiological Sciences

Collected here are the proceedings of a symposium of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, held at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, 26–27 March 1993.

Articles and authors include the following: Chapter 1, “Brain Structure and Functions”: “Cent cinquante ans de faits, de théories, et d’hypothèses sur l’intégration cérébrale: Quelques exemples” (One hundred and fifty years of facts, theories and hypotheses concerning the integration of cerebral function: A few examples), by Pierre Buser; “On the History of the Ideas of Efference Copy and Reafference,” by Otto Joachim Grüsser; “Understanding the Functional Architecture of Cortical Tissue in the Nineteenth Century,” by Olaf Breidbach; “Aspects of Brain Localization in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany,” by Michael Hagner; and “Mach and Hering’s Physiology of Senses,” by Jan Janko.

Chapter 2, “Brain Physiology and Behaviour”: “Tradition, Metaphors, Anatomy of the Brain: The Physiology of Insanity in the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” by Michael Kutzer; “Combien de corps y a-t-il dans le corps? Quelques remarques à propos de la neurophysiologie du siècle des Lumières” (How many bodies are there in the body? A few comments regarding neurophysiology in the Century of Luminaries), by Alexandre Métraux; and “Naissance et évolution du concept biologique de bisexualité” (Birth and evolution of the biological theory of bisexuality), by Claude Aron.

Chapter 3, “Endocrinology”: “La controverse entre Gley et Moussu sur la spécificité des fonctions de la thyroïde et des parathyroïdes” (The controversy between Gley and Moussu about the specificity of thyroid and parathyroid function), by Christian Bange; “Sir Henry Dale and Autopharmacology: The Role of Acetylcholine in Neurotransmission,” by Tilli Tansey; and “Henry Dale, Scepticism, Theory, Luck, Strategy, and Tactics,” by David Smith.

Chapter 4, “Physiology, Hygiene and Medicine: National and International Aspects”: “La transformation chimio-physiologique de l’hygiène à la fin du dix-huitième siècle” (The chemico-physiological transformation of hygiene at the end of the eighteenth century), by Jacques Lambert; “Evolutionism and Embryology in the Warsaw Physician Milieu in the Years 1859–1939,” by Krzysztof Jeziorski; and “Physiology, Periodicals, and National Differences at the End of the 1860s,” by Christian Bonah.