Physiology from 1900 to 1920: Incidents, Accidents, and Advances

This article consists of an attempt to comply in part with the request of the Editor-to interpret on the basis of personal experiences the influences that have aided the development of physiology and channeled advances in the subject during the past fifty years. I t was probably assumed that I was qualified for such a task because I entered medical school at practically the beginning of the century, viz., in 1901 . As indicated in the title, I have chosen to confine the survey to the first two decades of the century, owing to limi­ tations of time and space and because relative newcomers are perhaps less familiar with conditions prevailing during that period. They may even labor under the delusion that our fund of physiological information was quite meager a half-century ago and that the greatest progress has been made during the past two or three decades. This erroneous belief might excusably be derived from the facts that during the past thirty years the number of physiologists has greatly increased, laboratories have become more com­ modious and better equipped, enormous funds have become available for the support of research, the number of papers published in more and better journals has skyrocketed, and new discoveries have been announced very frequently, even in lay publications and over the radio. May I, therefore, assure the present generation that the volume of physi­ ological information that we were required to master as students was by no means small, as can easily be verified by perusal of textbooks such as those of Stewart, 1895 (1); Schafer, 1898-1900 (2) ; and An American Textbook of Physiology, edited by Howell in 1901 (3). Candidates for a doctor's degree in physiology might well be required to have a familiarity with the material con­ tained in such texts. A rough estimate of our stock of physiological facts in various periods of the twentieth century can be made rather quickly by com­ paring the contents of textbooks issued in successive years. A deeper insight can be gained by consultation of outstanding monographs, lectures, and re­ views, and, since 1939, of successive volumes of the Annual Review of Physi­ ology. Among textbooks useful for such a survey, the following may be mentioned: Howell, 1905 (4); Nagel 1905-09 (5); Krehl, 1906 (6) ; Tigerstedt, 1907 (7); Luciani, 191 1-21 (8); Starling, 1912 (9); Bayliss, 1914 (10); Hew­ lett, 1916 (1 1); Macleod, 1918 (12); Hober, 1919 (13) ; Burton-Opitz, 1920 (14) ; Roaf, 1924 (15) ; Wright, 1926 (16); Bethe, eighteen volumes, 1927-32 (17); Martin & Weymouth, 1928 (18) ; Halliburton & McDowall, 1930 (19); Winton & Bayliss, 1931 (20) ; Gellhorn, 1931 (2 1); Wiggers, 1934 (22); Best &