Alexander Forbes and his achievement in electrophysiology.

Abstract

ALEXANDER FORBES AND HIS ACHIEVEMENT IN ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY* J. C. ECCLESÌ Alexander Forbes was a true Bostonian in every sense ofthe word. He was born in a Boston suburb, Milton, in 1882 and he died there in 1965. Though he lived there all his life, he was essentially an adventurer. His life was an adventure in two senses: Hejourneyed to some ofthe wildest places on earth, exploring them and mapping them; and, in another sense, he adventured in ideas. His very good friend, Lord Adrian, wrote so nicely about him: If Alexander Forbes had been less adventurous, his many talents might have added an entirely new chapter to Neurophysiology, but his friends would have had fewer personal memories to enjoy. [That is a typical expression by Adrian.] They would lack the endearing picture ofdie knight from die age ofchivalry [you can so easily imagine Alex as a knight excelling in chivalry] skilled in many pastimes, feeling the dual obligarion to search for knowledge and to endure hardship in a worthy cause. This is the man I write about both as a friend and as an admirer. I am also deeply attracted by him in another way. He was a grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous New Englander, a writer, a poet, and a philosopher. When I was in my teens, Emerson was my hero. I can remember that I read all ofhis essays and poems, and I felt the thrill of this noble intellect in its efforts to examine the world and all experience. I am sure that Alex did the same, because he was deeply imbued with the great wisdom and insight and the wonder that Emerson brought to his religion ofnature. In due course, Alex went to Harvard. He could hardly avoid that, of course, being a Bostonian! He graduated an M.D. in 1910, and then, with * This text was developed from a lecture given at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, inJuly 1968 during the tenure ofan Alexander Forbes Lectureship ofthe Grass Foundation. Recently, a more general biography with a definitive bibliography has appeared [1]. t Department ofPhysiology, State University ofNew York at Buffalo, 3435 Main St., Buffalo, New York 14214. 388 J. C. Eccles · Alexander Forbes Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Spring 1970 the wise advice of his professor, Walter Bradford Cannon, he went to Liverpool to work with Sherrington for two years, from 1910 to 1912. This was quite a determining feature in Alex's whole life. Furthermore, it gavehim the opportunity to "marry"—ifI may so express it—thewisdom of Sherrington with that of Lucas and Adrian in Cambridge, England. He went for three weeks to Cambridge and there discussed, thought, and worked with Keith Lucas, who was then in his prime, and with Adrian, his young pupil. This "marriage" set the whole pattern ofAlex's future scientific life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as I will endeavor to show you. The work with Sherrington in 1910-12 was published in part in a paper [2] communicated to the Royal Society by Sherrington entitled "On the Reflex Rhythm Induced by Concurrent Excitation and Inhibition ." The results ofsome ofhis work with Sherrington are very nicely displayed in myographic records of reflex muscular contractions. This investigation on reflex antagonism was suggested originally by Cannon. Alex then made the suggestion that this myographic work had to have an electrical counterpart in order to give more point to the interpretation of the myography, which was all that there was in this paper and, of course, all that there was in the Sherringtonian papers for many years to come. Alex returned to Harvard from England, and there, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was to spend almost all of his scientific life. Immediately on his return, he proceeded to continue with the same field ofresearch as in his English myographic work, but now utilized electrical recording. At that time, he was joined by Alan Gregg in their classical work on the flexor reflexes [3, 4]. Their two papers on the flexor reflex were landmarks, because for the first time there was the skilled application of electrical recording to central reflex phenomena. However, he writes in 1916 to Sherrington: It was very...