Walter R. Ingram at Ranson's Institute of Neurology, 1930-1936

WALTER R. INGRAM AT RANSON'S INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGY, 1930-1936 H. W. MAGOUN* and CHARLES FISHERY The recent loss of Walter Robinson (Rex)1 Ingram (1905-1978) will evoke a range of recollections of his richly productive career from his many friends and associates. This account will focus on his 6-year period, 1930-1936, almost half a century ago, at Stephen W. Ranson's Institute of Neurology, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, where Rex's activities as a neuroscientist began. In that brief interval, his ingenuity and concentrated effort were first directed to the development of a feasible sequence of steps and procedures for the successful use of the Horsley-Clarke stereotaxic instrument, which had lain fallow since its introduction some 25 years before. Next he applied this valuable resource to a burgeoning program ofcollaborative research with Charles Fisher on the functional relations of the hypothalamus and pituitary and their impairment in experimental diabetes insipidus. This formed an early landmark in the development of neuroendocrinology and was one of the factors which helped bring Ranson's newly established institute to national attention. (See fig. 1.) As spin-offs from this achievement, a spectrum of succeeding projects sprang up, the foci of which may be specified by a then-contemporary This work was supported in part by NIH grant LM 03069 from the National Library of Medicine. ?Professor emeritus, Brain Research Institute, Center for Health Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles 90024. tClinical professor emeritus, Sleep Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Fifth Avenue and 100th Street, New York, New York 10029. 'The background ofDr. Ingram's nickname "Rex" has graciously been provided by Mrs. Lydia M. (Bowen) Ingram. In the early twenties, during his undergraduate years at Grinnell College, Iowa, Walter R. (Robinson) Ingram and a number of his fellow students had become attracted to and went out for dramatics. In that same period, a handsome Hollywood movie star and director, stage-named Rex Ingram, was at the peak of his career. "Rex's classmates at Grinnell first gave him this name," Mrs. Ingram wrote on June 19, 1979 [1], "and when I met him in his senior and my sophomore year there, it was so well-established that I didn't know for some time that it was a nickname. By then, he was 'Rex' to me and I could never call him anything else. So the name followed him all his life. Even his parents learned to call him Rex!"© 1980 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/81/2401-0211101.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Autumn 1980 | 31 Fig. 1.—Rex Ingram: boy (1908) and man (1938) event in the East. In the same year that Ingramjoined Ranson's institute in Chicago, another young neuroscientist, John F. Fulton, joined the Department of Physiology at Yale University Medical School. As Fulton later recalled [2, p. 38], "When I first came to New Haven in 1930, 1 was asked to read a paper before the local medical society. I agreed to do this and, when the secretary asked for the title, I gave him 'The Hypothalamus .' An alarmed voice at the other end of the wire said, 'The hypo-what?' He seemed never to have heard of it and asked, 'What does it do?' I replied, 'Well, the hypothalamus influences thirst, metabolism, certain sexual reactions, and also has something to do with sleep.' The old gentleman exclaimed, 'What an admirable sequence! Your title will be announced as 'Feeding, Drinking, Sex, and Sleep!' The result was a record attendance!" Starting with drinking and water exchange, chance observations in Ingram and Fisher's initial studies subsequently inaugurated programs of research in each of these other fields, though not precisely in the admirable Fultonian sequence. Before getting directly into these hypothalamic programs, however, it is only fitting to begin, as did Rex Ingram at Ranson's institute, with background developments concerning the Horsley-Clarke instrument. This will take us to England, where Rex was born—not to his birthplace at Liverpool, but to London, where the first Horsley-Clarke instrument was designed, constructed, and subsequently lost. The First Horsley-Clarke Instrument Recovered in London The centenary ofthe...