In a recent Classical Perspectives article in The Journal of Physiology (Joyner, 2005), Mike Joyner summarizes his perspective of the contribution of a paper by McCloskey & Mitchell (1972). This does an excellent job of highlighting an area of research that continues to be important to this day and often throws up surprises. Unfortunately the account contains some inaccuracies and also overlooks key contributions from British scientists. An almost similar paper to the one above was published in 1971 in The Journal of Physiology (Coote et al. 1971). Our paper was the first to report the use of ventral root stimulation to evoke contraction of muscles and we did this in anaesthetized as well as in decerebrate cats (see also Coote et al. 1969). One particular difference in the paper by McCloskey and Mitchell was that they very elegantly showed that it was muscle afferent fibre Goup III and IV that were responsible but this was hardly surprising since with Perez-Gonzalez in 1970 I had published our studies on the effects on blood pressure and renal sympathetic nerve activity of stimulating muscle afferents of different sizes showing that only these small fibres were involved (Coote & Perez-Gonzalez, 1970). So I think Mike Joyner was going a little too far in implying that we didn't know these facts before the McCloskey and Mitchell paper. In tracing the history of what has subsequently occurred I think attention should have been drawn to an important study by Mike White and Richard Bull, which showed that similar blood pressure and heart rate effects can be evoked to voluntary contraction by electrically induced contraction of muscle (Bull et al. 1989). A significant finding in the latter paper was that in a post-contraction occlusion of the muscle circulation the blood pressure remained increased whilst the heart rate returned to base line, a phenomena that we have recently concluded can be explained by the differing actions of muscle Group III mechanoreceptors mainly affecting cardiac vagal tone whilst Group IV metaboreceptors mainly affect sympathetic tone (Gladwell & Coote, 2002; Gladwell et al. 2005). As to the way the afferent information converges Joyner does not draw attention to the beautiful studies of Peter McWilliams' group in Leeds, which in 1991–92, was already clearly demonstrating that the heart rate increase to muscle contraction was greater when cardiac vagal tone was increased by raising baroreceptor input. Furthermore, they showed that electrical stimulation of muscle nerves activated GABA neurones in the NTS and blocked baroreceptor excited units (McWilliam & Yang, 1991; McMahon & McWilliam, 1992; McMahon et al. 1992).We still do not know whether this is the primary site for interaction between muscle afferents and the baroreceptor reflex but the differential effect on heart rate and blood pressure of the muscle afferents might point to an influence in addition closer to the cardiac vagal neurones. I hope this sets the record straight although I accept that mine, like Mike Joyner's, is a biased viewpoint.