Frasi di Charles Scott Sherrington
Charles Scott Sherrington
Data di nascita: 27. Novembre 1857
Data di morte: 4. Marzo 1952
Sir Charles Scott Sherrington è stato un neurofisiologo, poeta patologo inglese.
Si occupò principalmente dello studio della fisiologia del sistema nervoso e dei riflessi motori, ma anche di istologia, patologia, batteriologia e biologia. Nel 1920 fu nominato presidente della Royal Society e nel 1932 ottenne, insieme ad Edgar Douglas Adrian, il Premio Nobel per la medicina o la Fisiologia per le loro scoperte sulle funzioni dei neuroni.Con il suo lavoro, in particolare, Sherrington pose le basi per la moderna neurofisiologia, introducendo e sviluppando concetti come sinapsi, propriocezione, riflesso sensomotorio e motoneurone. Le sue ricerche iniziali riguardarono la contrazione del ginocchio. In seguito dimostrò l'esistenza dei nervi sensoriali nei muscoli e il loro coinvolgimento nell'atto motorio, definendo l'unità neuromotoria. Approfondì in particolare lo stato inibitorio ed eccitatorio del riflesso e la gradazione dell'impulso nervoso: proprio l'"Inibizione come fattore coordinato" fu l'argomento principale del suo discorso al Premio Nobel.Accanto alla sua attività scientifica, Sherrington coltivò anche l'attività poetica, pubblicando raccolte di versi come The Assaying of Brabantius and other verse.
Insegnò nelle Università di Oxford e Liverpool, lavorò al St. Thomas's Hospital di Londra.
Fu influenzato da grandi scienziati come Rudolf Virchow, William Osler, Walter Holbrook Gaskell, David Ferrier e Friedrich Goltz e a sua volta influenzò scienziati di alto livello come John Carew Eccles, Ragnar Arthur Granit, Harvey Williams Cushing, Howard Walter Florey e Wilder Penfield.
Frasi Charles Scott Sherrington
„The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns.“
Man On His Nature (1942), p. 178
Contesto: In the great head-end which has been mostly darkness springs up myriads of twinkling stationary lights and myriads of trains of moving lights of many different directions. It is as though activity from one of those local places which continued restless in the darkened main-mass suddenly spread far and wide and invaded all. The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of traveling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns. Now as the waking body rouses, subpatterns of this great harmony of activity stretch down into the unlit tracks of the stalk-piece of the scheme. Strings of flashing and travelling sparks engage the lengths of it. This means that the body is up and rises to meet its waking day.
„The brain is a mystery; it has been and still will be. How does the brain produce thoughts? That is the central question and we have still no answer to it.“
As quoted in the article The Human Brain — Three Pounds of Mystery, in 'The Watchtower' magazine (15 July 1978)
„It is difficult to get a hearing from busy men for even a great new truth.“
[408247, October 1927, Listerian Oration: 1927 (delivered at the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, Toronto, June 18, 1927), Canadian Medical Association Journal, 17, 10 Pt 2, 1255–1263, 20316567, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC408247/] quote from p. 1261; This oration sponsored by the Lister Club of the Canadian Medical Association should not be confused with the Lister Oration sponsored by the Royal College of Surgeons of England.