The Cambridge Physiological Laboratory: some early history
The
story of the earliest days of the Laboratory is in effect the story of a single
man, Michael Foster. Physiology was taught here essentially as a branch of
Anatomy until the appointment of Foster not by the University but by Trinity
College (as Praelector in Physiology), apparently acting in response to suggestions
by Huxley, G. H. Lewes and his wife, the author George Eliot. The University
at first simply supplied a room, furnished with basic equipment by Trinity,
though in 1878 a purpose-built laboratory was constructed on the east side
of Downing Street near the recently-opened Cavendish Laboratories. In a preface
to his Studies from the Physiological Laboratory in the University of Cambridge Foster expressed his gratitude for being permitted to occupy ‘at some inconvenience to others, the two University rooms in which my lectures
are given, the practical teaching of my class conducted and the physiological
work carried on. I have presumed on their kindness and ventured to call these
rooms the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge’.
Though Foster’s contributions to research were not enduring, the hallmark of
his teaching was a passionate commitment to the principle that learning should
be firmly based on observation and experiment, and the closest integration
between lectures and practicals. In Foster’s Royal Society obituary, W. H.
Gaskell wrote that Foster "insisted that practical work, carried on by the student himself, illustrative
of the facts on which the lecture was based, must immediately follow the lecture.
(In this he was following principles used by Huxley). The physiology of each
organ must be dealt with as a whole in the lecture, and the practical work
must be so arranged as to bring home to the student all of the points of each
lecture at the time ... His ideal laboratory would be of sufficient size to
provide each student with his own working place, both in the histological and
in the chemical department at the same time. He also - and this was one of
the great reasons of his success - encouraged his students at the very earliest
moment to engage in some original research, and then persuaded them to give
a few lectures of an advanced character upon the subject on which they were
working: for, as he said, there is no way of discovering gaps in your knowledge
of a subject better than lecturing on
it." From these principles can be traced not only the present Part II, with its research
projects that frequently result in published papers, but also the Foster Club
at which members of the laboratory talk relatively informally about what they
are doing. (Another legacy is the lab cricket team: Foster was also an avid cricketer,
and organised annual matches between the staff and students, or the staff and
assistants, in which he would himself be captain.)
In 1883 Foster’s work was recognised by the foundation of the first Professorship
of Physiology in the University; by then he was heavily occupied with the editorship
of the Journal
of Physiology, founded in 1878, with successive
editions of his influential Text-book of Physiology, and his secretaryship of the Royal Society; he had also been one of the prime
movers in
creating the Physiological Society itself. J. N. Langley wrote of him: "Sir Michael Foster’s varied work in life was only made possible by his sincere
and genuine nature. He was a man of large aims, and generous enthusiasms, of
strong
initiative and unusual powers of inducing others to see as he did."
At his death, in 1907, Foster left behind him a team of enthusiasts, of whom
perhaps John Newport Langley was to be the most influential. Langley was not
a natural lecturer: Dale wrote that he "had no gift of inspiration as a lecturer , but I got more from Langley than I
recognised at the time", while Joseph Barcroft recalled that his lectures were mines of information
but difficult to follow, but that as a Demonstrator it was a matter of conscience
to Langley to demonstrate through each class period and to get to know each
man individually: it was then that his greatness was conveyed to the student.
As well as being an energetic editor of the Journal, and nearly single-handedly
establishing the physiology of the autonomic nervous system, as Professor (1903)
he presided over the Laboratory’s move in 1914 to the handsome building provided
by the generosity of the Drapers Company.
The new Laboratory provided spacious and well-equipped facilities for practical
classes and for demonstrations, which remained at the heart of the way the
subject was taught. It was designed with the expectation that a lecture theatre
would eventually be added to the north-east, while on the opposite side was
the Department of Psychology, into which the laboratory eventually encroached.
The entire third and fourth floors were devoted to experimental and histological
classrooms, with places for over 120 students in each class. It is interesting
to note that in the early 1920’s there were some 200 students in each of the
first two years, and up to 40 in Part II, while the teaching staff consisted
of one Professor, one Reader, three Lecturers and three Demonstrators, with
a total of 9 full-time assistant staff.
One of the lecturers at that date was Edgar Adrian, later Baron Adrian of Cambridge, O.M., F.R.S. and Nobel Laureate, President of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College. His basement room, inherited from Keith Lucas, the brilliant experimentalist so tragically killed in a flying accident during the war, was specially shielded from vibrations that might disturb the string galvanometers and capillary electrometers used for electrical recording. It contained, in Carl Pfaffman’s words the most glorious clutter ever seen’ (as can be verified in the photograph on the left, taken by Peter Starling in 1964 - with some items that had lain untouched for 40 years).
It was here, during ‘one day’s experiment that Adrian suddenly realised while
recording using his new amplifier from a frog nerve-muscle preparation that
what seemed to be a tiresomely oscillating electrical artefact only occurred
when the muscle was hanging unsupported: "The explanation suddenly dawned on me ... a muscle hanging under its own weight
ought, if you come to think of it, to be sending sensory impulses up the nerves
coming from the muscle spindles ... That particular day’s work, I think, had
all the elements that one could wish for. The new apparatus seemed to be misbehaving
very badly indeed, and I suddenly found it was behaving so well that it was
opening up an entire new range of data ... it didn’t involve any particular
hard work, or any particular intelligence on my part. It was just one of those
things which sometimes happens in a laboratory if you stick apparatus together
and see what results you get.
I have drawn heavily from W. J. O’Connor (1988) Founders
of British
Physiology: A biographical dictionary, 1820-1885 (Manchester University
Press)
Other references:
E. D. Adrian (1954) Memorable experiences in
research Diabetes 3
17-18
Joseph Barcroft (1925) Nature 116
872-3
J. K. Bradley, E. M. Tansey (1996) The coming of the electronic age to the Cambridge
Physiological Laboratory: E. D. Adrian's valve amplifier in 1921, Notes
and Records of the Royal Society 50 217-228.
W. H. Gaskell
(1908) Proc. Roy. Soc. B 80
lxx-lxxxi
A. L. Hodgkin (1992) Chance and Design: Reminiscences
of Science in Peace and War. (Cambridge University
Press).
A. L. Hodgkin (1977) Chance and design in electrophysiology: an informal account
of certain experiments on nerve carried out between 1934 and
1952, In The
Pursuit of Nature, A. L Hodgkin (Ed), (Cambridge University
Press).
J. N. Langley (1925) University of Cambridge: Department of
Physiology. Methods
and Problems of Medical Education, Third Series. (The
Rockefeller Foundation, New York)pp. 7-17
G. M. Shepherd and Janice Brown (1989) The peak of electrochemical experiments
in physiology: a unique view
through Walter Miles’ "Report
of a Visit to Foreign Laboratories" in 1920. Caduceus 5 1-84
Postcript: some physiological knights
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This page was provided by Prof. R.
H. S. Carpenter
Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge
CB2 3EG
Tel +44 1223 333886 Fax +44 1223 333840