A Reply to Bishop and Heinbecker's "Fiber Distribution in Optic and Saphenous Nerves."

Abstract

In a paper by Bishop and Heinbecker there occurs a serious misinterpretation of a statement published by us. They quote from our paper as follows, “The results therefore fail to support the view (of Bishop and Heinbecker), that there are fiber types distinguishable by time to maximum, conduction rate, irritability and refractory period.....Since it is possible to recognize differences in the physiological responses of individual axons, it is no longer incumbent upon physiologists to adhere to the doctrine of specific nerve energies.” These two passages they gratuitously take to mean “that the same fiber mediated (mediates) different sensations by means of impulses of different character” (italics theirs) and then proceed to attack, with facetiousness as their weapon, the windmill they have erected. As a matter of fact, we had no intention of conveying any such meaning and presented no evidence in support of such a point of view. The misinterpretation presumably was caused by reading as'responses of an individual axon'the words ”responses of individual axons”. In so far as the doctrine of specific nerve energies is concerned, the point we wished to make, and would have made in as many words had there been space in an abstract, was that since it is possible to distinguish in the fibers of a nerve a very wide and apparently continuous range in the characters of their responses the possibility exists of a transmission of impulses along paths in the central nervous system adapted to impulses of specific configurations. This is an elaboration, based on more definite information, of a point of view previously presented by Erlanger, Gasser and Bishop and since by Adrian.