Walter Holbrook Gaskell

Name: The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction
Author: Walter Holbrook Gaskell

The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

Summary

“The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction”, published in 1908, is a work by Walter Holbrook Gaskell. It explores elements such as physiology, gut and investigation.

Quotes from The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (Walter Holbrook Gaskell)

Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ I have been told that it is impossible for one man to consider so vast a subject with that thoroughness which is necessary, before any theory can be accepted as the true solution of the problem. I acknowledge the vastness of the task, and feel keenly enough my own shortcomings. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Nothing but good can, in my opinion, result from the incursion of the non-specialist into the realm of the specialist, provided that the former is in earnest. Over and over again the chemist has given valuable help to the physicist, and the physicist to the chemist, so closely allied are the two subjects; so also is it with physiology and anatomy, the two subjects are so interdependent that a worker in the one may give valuable aid towards the solution of some large problem which is the special territory of the other. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Not having been educated in a morphological laboratory and taught that the one organ which is homologous throughout the animal kingdom is the gut, and that therefore the gut of the invertebrate ancestor must continue on as the gut of the vertebrate, the conception that the central nervous system has grown round and enclosed the original ancestral gut, and that the vertebrate has formed a new gut did not seem to me so impossible as to prevent my taking it as a working hypothesis, and seeing to what it would lead. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Nowadays all scientific knowledge has increased so largely that specialization is inevitable, and every investigator is confined more and more not only to one department of science, but as a rule to one small portion of that department. In the case of such cognate sciences as physiology and comparative anatomy this limiting of the scope of view is especially deleterious, for zoology without physiology is dead, and physiology in many of its departments without comparative anatomy can advance but little. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ This led me to an investigation of the accelerator fibres, to find out how far they are non-medullated, and so to the discovery that the rami communicantes connecting together the central nervous system and the sympathetic are in reality single, not double, as had hitherto been thought; for the grey ramus communicans is in reality a peripheral nerve which supplies the blood-vessels of the spinal cord and its membranes, and is of the same nature as the grey accelerators to the heart. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Any one who has been thinking over any one problem for so long a time becomes obsessed with the infallibility of his own views, and is not capable of criticizing his own work as thoroughly as others would do. ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Then, again, the too exclusive study of one subject always tends to force the mind into a special groove—into a line of thought so deeply tinged with the prevalent teaching of the subject, that any suggestions which arise contrary to such teaching are apt to be dismissed at once as heretical and not worthy of further thought ”

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ It may perhaps be instructive to my readers to see how one investigation leads to another, until at last, nolens volens, the worker finds himself in front of a possible solution to a problem far removed from his original investigation, which by the very magnitude and importance of it forces him to devote his whole energy and time to seeing whether his theory is good. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ The ventricles of the brain were the old cephalic stomach, and the canal of the spinal cord the long straight intestine which led originally to the anus, and still in the vertebrate embryo opens out into the anus. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter Holbrook Gaskell, The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (1908)

“ Following out this clue, I then found that in addition to this thoracico-lumbar outflow of efferent ganglionated visceral nerves, there are similar outflows in the cranial and sacral regions, belonging in the former case especially to the vagus system of nerves, and in the latter to the system of nerves which pass from the sacral region of the cord to the ganglion-cells of the hypogastric plexus, and from them supply the bladder, rectum, etc. ”

Walter Holbrook Gaskell

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Quotes from The Origin of Vertebrates — Introduction (Walter Holbrook Gaskell)

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