The War of the Soups and the Sparks by Elliot S. Valenstein

Author:Elliot S. Valenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCI007000, Science/Life Sciences/Biochemistry, SCI089000, Science/Life Sciences/Neuroscience
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2005-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

Such nonscientific factors may have colored the dispute, but the arguments raised against chemical transmission were always framed around conflicting data and observations. Many neurophysiologists were convinced that chemical transmission is too slow to be the basis for the fast responses of skeletal muscles that only they could record with their technically more sophisticated electronic equipment. Although it was no longer possible for neurophysiologists to deny the evidence that acetylcholine is secreted by spinal motor nerves, they insisted that any role it played in neurotransmission was a secondary one, restricted to modulating the primary response to electrical transmission.

The list of neurophysiologists who refused to accept that acetylcholine plays a major role in innervating skeletal muscles included eminent scientists of the stature of Albert Fessard, Ralph Gerard, Rafael Lorente de Nó, John Fulton, Herbert Gasser, Joseph Erlanger, and John Eccles, the last three of whom were later awarded the Nobel Prize.4 Erlanger, for example, citing his recording of the progress of a neural impulse along a damaged axon, stated that: “If an inactive stretch of fiber over 1 mm in length does not stand in the way of electrical transmission of the impulse, is it reasonable to maintain that the discontinuity at a synapse will stop such transmission.”5 A few neurophysiologists were more open to the possibility of chemical transmission. Detlev Bronk, for example, was clearly on the fence in 1939 when he wrote that: “I have no desire to defend either the acetylcholine hypothesis or the theory of excitation by circulating currents…. I would argue for a pluralistic theory.”6 In general, however, the two sides were far apart, and the dispute called the “War of the Soups and the Sparks” extended over two decades.7

John Eccles was not as willing as some others to concede a role for chemical transmission. In a letter dated February 11, 1939, Henry Dale wrote to Eccles that John Fulton had informed him that he (Eccles) was about to report “some experiments that strongly support the acetylcholine hypothesis.” Eccles replied on March 1 that he could not imagine where Fulton had gotten that idea and added: “I fear your hopes of an early rapprochement will have suffered a disappointment before this [letter] reaches you … the fact is that I have become more antagonistic than ever to the humoral view.”8

John Eccles is generally considered to have been the leading and most influential opponent of chemical transmission. Eccles was a native Australian who, after completing his medical degree with first class honors at Melbourne University in 1925, enrolled on a Rhodes scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford. From 1927 to 1931 Eccles worked in Charles Sherrington’s laboratory, receiving his doctoral degree in 1929. Much of his research, including his thesis, was on neural excitation and inhibition. Eccles was under consideration to succeed Sherrington, but when he was not chosen he returned to Australia in 1937 to head a small research unit in the pathology department of a hospital in Sydney.

In a letter dated September 16, 1937, Dale wrote

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