https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.88.6

A portrait medallion of Carl Ludwig, the famous German physiologist and inventor of the kymograph, William Rutherford’s own ‘Ludwig’ kymograph, and a Lewis–Mackenzie polygraph (the precursor of the ‘lie detector’) comprised the star attractions on the History and Archives Committee stand at this year’s Main Meeting, Physiology 2012. These pieces were generously loaned by the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Integrative Physiology.

Other items on display included a large annotated photograph showing all the attendees of the 1923 International Congress of Physiological Sciences held in Edinburgh, with an accompanying letter from the Edinburgh Police chief describing the arrangements for checking passports of the attending ‘aliens’. Our thanks goes out to Jane Haley, Neuroscience Scientific Manager at the University of Edinburgh, who put in much of her own time to clean and prepare all these items for display.

In addition to Edinburgh’s historical memorabilia, there was a rolling slideshow of photos of noted physiologists. These pictures were the legacy of Martin Rosenberg – a long-standing member of the History and Archives Committee who died last October – and a testament to the immense contribution he made to recording the history of physiology.

The stand also celebrated the lives of two successive Edinburgh professors of physiology: William Rutherford and Sir Edward Sharpey-Schafer. Along with Rutherford’s kymograph, we exhibited the first volume of the journal Sharpey-Schafer founded: the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology (today’s Experimental Physiology).