Details
SHERRINGTON, Sir Charles Scott (1857-1952). The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906.
8o (221 x 140 mm). Half-title. Line-block figures in text. Original dark green cloth (some wear at ends of spine and corners, rear inner hinge cracked).
[With:] Autograph letter signed from Sherrington to Frederic S. Lee, 26 October 1918 (tipped to flyleaf); additional clipped signature of Sherrington (laid in), newspaper clippings, including obituaries of Sherrington from the Times and the New York Times, International Edition, both 6 March 1952 (tipped to endleaves and half-title); and clippings from and pencilled notes referring to various booksellers' catalogues.
Provenance: Frederic Schiller Lee (1859-1939), neurophysiologist whose work was cited by Sherrington in this volume (signature, pencilled notes, letter from Sherrington to Lee tipped to flyleaf); Walter Reginald Bett (1903-1968), medical historian (signature dated New York City, April 1937, pencilled notes, printed book label).
FIRST EDITION of a work whose significance in the history of science and medicine has been compared with that of Harvey's De motu cordis or Newton's Principia. "Sherrington was the most important neurophysiologist Britain has produced, and perhaps the most remarkable neuroscientist ever to have lived. His work bridged the gap between the theoretical and speculative neurology of the nineteenth century and the empirical science of the twentieth. He carried out an extensive program of experimentation, and the results of these investigations placed clinical neurology on a sound scientific footing ... In studying the nervous system, Sherrington began with the most primitive and simple nervous function, the reflex, which he spent years investigating and analyzing; he understood that as the atom was considered to be the most elemental particle of all material things, so the reflex was the most basic form of all nervous activity. At the heart of the reflex is the connection between nerve cells, which he was the first to call the synapse, and he hypothesized, long before it could be demonstrated, that secreted chemical mediators carried impulses from one neuron to another" (Grolier Medicine).
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System had its origin in the Silliman Memorial Lectures which Sherrington gave at Yale in 1904. The first edition, though copyrighted by Yale University in 1906, was published in New York by Charles Scribner's Sons. In 1911 and several times subsequently the text was reissued with the imprint "New Haven: Yale University Press, 1906", but these copies are always identified on the verso of the title page as belonging to a later printing. Garrison-Morton 1432; Heirs of Hippocrates 2198; PMM 397; Norman 1939.
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[With:] Autograph letter signed from Sherrington to Frederic S. Lee, 26 October 1918 (tipped to flyleaf); additional clipped signature of Sherrington (laid in), newspaper clippings, including obituaries of Sherrington from the Times and the New York Times, International Edition, both 6 March 1952 (tipped to endleaves and half-title); and clippings from and pencilled notes referring to various booksellers' catalogues.
Provenance: Frederic Schiller Lee (1859-1939), neurophysiologist whose work was cited by Sherrington in this volume (signature, pencilled notes, letter from Sherrington to Lee tipped to flyleaf); Walter Reginald Bett (1903-1968), medical historian (signature dated New York City, April 1937, pencilled notes, printed book label).
FIRST EDITION of a work whose significance in the history of science and medicine has been compared with that of Harvey's De motu cordis or Newton's Principia. "Sherrington was the most important neurophysiologist Britain has produced, and perhaps the most remarkable neuroscientist ever to have lived. His work bridged the gap between the theoretical and speculative neurology of the nineteenth century and the empirical science of the twentieth. He carried out an extensive program of experimentation, and the results of these investigations placed clinical neurology on a sound scientific footing ... In studying the nervous system, Sherrington began with the most primitive and simple nervous function, the reflex, which he spent years investigating and analyzing; he understood that as the atom was considered to be the most elemental particle of all material things, so the reflex was the most basic form of all nervous activity. At the heart of the reflex is the connection between nerve cells, which he was the first to call the synapse, and he hypothesized, long before it could be demonstrated, that secreted chemical mediators carried impulses from one neuron to another" (Grolier Medicine).
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System had its origin in the Silliman Memorial Lectures which Sherrington gave at Yale in 1904. The first edition, though copyrighted by Yale University in 1906, was published in New York by Charles Scribner's Sons. In 1911 and several times subsequently the text was reissued with the imprint "New Haven: Yale University Press, 1906", but these copies are always identified on the verso of the title page as belonging to a later printing. Garrison-Morton 1432; Heirs of Hippocrates 2198; PMM 397; Norman 1939.