Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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The night before Easter Sunday of that year [1920] I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of thin paper. Then I fell asleep again. It
occurred to me at six o’clock in the morning that
during the night I had written down something most important, but I was
unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at three
o’clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an
experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical
transmission that I had uttered seventeen years ago was correct.
I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a simple
experiment on a frog heart according to the nocturnal design.[Loewi was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1936]
E S Valenstein (2002) The discovery of chemical transmitters. Brain and Cognition, vol 49 pp 73-95
Thus in brief, to our imagination cometh, by the outward sense or memory, some object to be known (residing in the foremost part of the brain) which he, misconceiving or amplifying, presently communicates to the heart, the seat of all affections. The pure spirits forthwith flock from the brain to the heart by certain secret channels, and signify what good or bad object was presented; which immediately bends itself to prosecute or avoid it, and, withal, draweth with it other humours to help it. So, in pleasure, concur great store of purer spirits; in sadness, much melancholy blood; in ire, choler. If the imagination be very apprehensive, intent and violent, it sends great stores of spirits to or from the heart, and makes a deeper impression, and greater tumult; as the humours in the body be likewise prepared, and the temperature itself ill or well disposed, the passions are longer and stronger: so that the first step and fountain of all our grievances in this kind is a distorted imagination, which, misinforming the heart, causeth all these distemperatures, alteration and confusion of spirits and humours….The spirits so confounded…bad humours increased….and thick spirits engendered, with melancholy blood.
R Burton (1641) Anatomy of Melancholy
