Electrophysiologie

Abstract

PROF. BIEDERMANN, who was not many years ago promoted to the chair of Physiology at Jena, is well known as having co-operated with Prof. Hering in a very extended series of researches on the “general physiology of muscle and nerve,” of which the results have been communicated to the Vienna Academy from time to time during the last twenty years. The present work will be welcomed by physiologists in the hope that it will not only place at their disposal the rich harvest of the author's persevering labours in this field of inquiry, but that it will afford to him the opportunity of dealing more completely than has hitherto been possible with one of the most fundamental characteristics of the animal organism—its power of responding in a specific way to stimulation. This being, as we learn from the introduction, the purpose of the book, the title “Electrophysiologie” may seem scarcely suitable, for however intimate and essential may be the relation between vital processes and the electrical phenomena which accompany them, these, after all, are only concomitants, and must be thought of apart from the process itself. However this may be, the author makes it quite clear that his scope is not electrical, but purely physiological. Referring to the “Muskel-physik” and the “Nerven-physiologie” of Prof. Hermann, published in 1880, he declares it to be his purpose to bring the subjects therein treated up to date, and in doing so to follow the true physiological method. Electrophysiologie. Von W. Biedermann, Professor der Physiologie in Jena. (Jena: Fischer, 1895.)