A quote about... JBS

Two famous physiologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were J.B. Haldane (1860-1936) and his son J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964)—the latter of whom was often known simply as JBS. Both were fascinating characters for a variety of reasons, and both made substantial contributions to physiology. As part of their investigations, they would often experiment on themselves and each other. This is a practice that today may not be deemed ethical—or wise—these days. I very much doubt that they filled in the appropriate forms or sought the approval of their relevant ethics committee.

Outside the laboratory, JBS had an attitude to teaching that mirrored his approach to his research. As Ronald Clark puts it in his JBS: The Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane (New York: Coward-McCann, 1968)

'When it came to teaching, Haldane had his own ideas. He more than once said that the whole business of University education was to teach people to think; the corollary was that the more they were personally controlled in their studies, the less individual thinking they were likely to do. One outcome was that he often appeared unable to direct properly the work either of students or of his research colleagues.' (p94/5)

(Comment: To do this in some educational establishments today may require a bravery beyond that shown even by the Haldanes!)

Saccades

 I recently found the following among my old notes. It is from the book What Do You Think You Are? by Brian Clegg and appears in a section entitled The Double-Dealing Brain.

"In reality, the signals from the rods and cones in your eyes, funnelled through the optic nerves, are picked up by a series of modules that do things like separate out shapes, deal with blocks of colour and so on. This explains why what you see is deceptive. One obvious example is the fact that there's a blind spot on your retina where the optic nerve connects to it. But you don't see that gap - the brain fills the image in for you. Similarly, your eyes are regularly darting about in very quick little motions called saccades—but your brain irons out the motion-sickness-inducing jerkiness and provides a totally fake still image."

This particularly sparked my attention because of an experiment in which an old professor of mine took part. While visiting Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, he was persuaded to take part in an experiment that cancelled out the saccades to which Clegg refers. I don’t know exactly how this was performed; our professor did not say and probably did not know himself, except that an image at which he was looking was moved in such a way as to be opposite to his eye movements. The result was, for him, quite shocking. He could no longer see. It is not strictly correct to say that he went blind per se, but he did, in effect, lose his vision during the experiment.

Some students of podiatry that I used to teach had a similarly shocking experience—albeit at the other end of the body. As part of their training, they were required to administer anaesthetics to each other. This was under strict supervision, and what to expect was described clearly beforehand. One of the anaesthetics was meant to temporarily immobilise the leg. Despite knowing what to expect, on every occasion students would become quite distressed upon losing the use of one of their legs. Even those who had embarked on the process in a confident, even nonchalant, fashion quickly changed their demeanour.

Sight loss and loss of mobility are not uncommon and occur with increasing age. But they are usually gradual. They creep up on us sometimes without us really noticing. A sudden loss has quite a different bearing upon our lives, even though it may be something that may be envisaged, albeit in later life.

Addendum
Having written the above—and having gone to make a cup of tea—I am reminded, upon listening to the radio, that something else that may be sudden or gradual is the end of our lives. We die and are, to some extent, in the process of dying even while our bodies are able to resist the inevitable. If we do not reflect on that type of loss, maybe it is because we are subconsciously aware that we will not be here to notice the change.

Water 3

Having started to think about the place of water in human physical existence, the subject has grown. For example, a previous post—the second on the subject—was meant to be just a brief note, but it grew until it had numerous hyperlinks to other sources of information. This time I again hope to be brief. (Was I? See below.)

This time, I want to ask what appears to be a simple question, which I shall phrase in two ways:

    - Why is water tasteless?

    - Why does water have no apparent flavour?

Is flavour in the mouth or mind of the beholder? Yes, there are taste buds that respond to certain chemical constituents of food. Why no apparent response to water?

The chemicals to which the taste buds respond must be dissolved in water in order to reach the nerve endings the taste buds house. A dry is largely unable to taste anything.

Water does have a ‘mouthfeel’ that differs according to its temperature and a number of other factors.

Do we enjoy drinking water? We seem to enjoy it more when we are thirsty, i.e., when we need it more. When it is hot, we enjoy drinking cold water rather than hot water. Some people do enjoy drinking tepid or even hot water. That is not my preference. This begs the question, are there really preferences when it comes to drinking water? Sparkling (fizzy/carbonated) water—which does not occur naturally—has a distinctive mouthfeel, which many find particularly pleasant.

Why isn’t there a flavour that inclines us to drink more water? I was very much taken by a sentence in Helena Cronin’s book The Ant and the Peacock. She comments that ‘oranges taste sweet, not nutritious.’ From our desire for oranges based on their flavour, we indirectly obtain the nutrition they happen to contain—and indirectly water bearing the flavour.

Given that water is fundamental to life, obtaining it does not seem to be based on a desire for its enjoyment. Instead, a different mechanism is in play. We experience a need for it, a need that we call thirst. This need—or craving—must be satisfied. This need goes deeper than the pleasure to be had from experiencing flavour. It is better described as a dependency.

Eponyms 1b

Here's another footnote to Eponyms 1 (following on from Eponyms 1a, hence Eponyms 1b).

In my Anatomical Wordbook (Lewis, 1990), I included a brief list of the more commonly used eponyms still circulating at the time of publication. That list can be viewed/downloaded using the hyperlink below.

From An Anatomical Wordbook: Eponyms (Lewis, 1990)

She is a reasonable soul

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) once opined that,

'It is highly dishonourable for a Reasonable Soul to live in so Divinely built a Mansion as the Body she* resides in, altogether unacquainted with the exquisite Structure of it.'

Various dates for the quotation have been cited. It is not the dating but the sentiment that matters. Where found quoted, it is an encouragement to find out what we are made of. How is it, Boyle in effect asks, that people can go through life without finding out about their very substance and how it is organised? In a world where people are seemingly so 'health conscious,' one might have expected much more desire to find out.

Indeed, Boyle’s sentiments were independently echoed by the British physiologist A.V. Hill (1886-1977) in the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, ‘Biology in Education and Human Life,’ given at Newnham College, Cambridge, on Nov. 22, 1930.

    (This lecture is available online at: Nature 127, 19-26 (3 January 1931) | doi:10.1038/127019a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/127019a0)

Following that lecture and its publication, Hill wrote to Nature the following brief letter:

Biology in Education and Human Life

In my Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (NATURE, Jan. 3, 1931) I protested that “those should be regarded as lacking education who are altogether ignorant of the nature of living things” (p. 21). Mr. A. D. Ritchie has directed my attention to a sentence of Robert Boyle’s, who about two and a half centuries ago, in much more beautiful words than mine, urged similarly that it is “highly dishonourable for a reasonable soul to live in so divinely built a mansion as the body she resides in altogether unacquainted with the exquisite structure of it”.

    (This is also available online at: Nature 127, 237-237 (14 February 1931) | doi:10.1038/127237c0 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v127/n3198/abs/127237c0.html)

* NB Boyle refers to his soul as 'she.' This is because the Greek word for soul, ψυχή (pronounced 'psoo-kay'—and from which we get 'psyche'), is linguistically a first declension noun with feminine gender (not ‘female sex'—even though the terms 'gender' and 'sex' are nowadays often used interchangeably).

More about the anus

Something else you won’t read in standard textbooks or hear in those lectures where politeness is deemed more important than understanding concerns what happens to the anus immediately following defecation. Again, this information was provided by one of my old professors* (the one mentioned in a previous post on a similar topic).

It transpires that the process of defaecation is not completely over once the faeces have left the body. The muscles around the anus, having opened, proceed to close but remain active for a brief period of time. (I’m afraid that I don’t know exactly how long this lasts, but it would appear to be for only a matter of minutes.)

As described by my old professor, these muscles tend to ‘writhe.’ That is, they move in a twisting, even worm-like fashion. This may simply be a way of their repositioning themselves back into a stable (comfortable?) arrangement until defecation takes place again. This writhing may have the effect of helping to clear the anal canal of any remaining faeces and should (Prof. advocated) be allowed sufficient time to complete the process.

Although this may not happen every time, allowing a period of relaxation after the main act of defecation sometimes results in small bits of faeces falling from the anus after a few minutes without any extra effort.

* NB All of my ‘old’ professors are now ‘late’ professors. I’ve read the obituaries. I hope, though, that in reporting what I can remember them saying, something survives.

More Latin / Muscular Latin

The anatomical use of Latin has figured in a number of posts—not least 'Saying Grace in Latin' with its addendum.

In that post I referred to my Anatomical Wordbook (pp. 14-21), where a list of Latin terms that appear in the names of muscles has been collected. To quote from the preface to that section:

Elements of a muscle's action, position, shape etc. are often implied by its name. In order to help facilitate translation of a muscle name into English the following list of words applied to muscles and their meanings is given. By chaining together the meanings of each word in the muscle's name and then reordering them where appropriate, a more readily remembered description of the muscle is obtained e.g. flexor digitorum superficialis renders Flexor/Of the fingers/Superficial. Upon reordering, the muscle name reads: The superficial flexor of the fingers'.

That list can now be viewed/downloaded using the hyperlink below.

From An Anatomical Wordbook: Muscle Latin.