Ueber einige neuere Forschungen im Gebiete der Anatomie des Centralnervensystems.

THE 'NEURON' NAMED
first edition tall 8vo. 64pp., figures through text, original tan wrappers with title page repeated on front panel, few fox spots at fore margin of the last few leaves, else a nice copy.
Signed on front wrapper "Connolly Norman".

Garrison & Morton 1369 Jeremy Norman 2173
On its appearance this was regarded as "an authoritative summary of what was known about the structure of nerve cells and nerve fibres. It gave clear expression to the point of view that all fibres arise directly from cells, and that a cell and its fibres form a unit, so that nervous transmission must take place from unit to unit. But the greatest influence of this review came from the new term 'neuron' introduced for the unit. It was a quintessential example of the power of a word in science: a symbol for a new concept. Waldeyer forced his readers to judge not only the accumulated evidence for the varieties of nerve cells and their fibres as independent interacting units, but also whether the term 'neuron' was acceptable, unambiguous, and useful in the light of this evidence. Waldeyer's review served the important function of focusing all the different strands of debate that had grown out of the study of the nerve cell over the preceding half century on the essential issues. Out of this controversy, which lasted for about a decade until the turn of the century, was fashioned the concensus that came to be called the 'neuron theory' or 'neuron doctrine' and that has served as the central organizing concept of neuroscience to the present day" [Shepherd].This "article ... probably did more than any other single publication to popularise the doctrine of the individuality of nerve elements in the nervous system" [Jeremy Norman]. Also published in serialised form in 1891 in Deutsch Med. Wschr.
Wilhelm von Waldeyer-Hartz (1836-1921), anatomist and Prof. in the University of Berlin, was famed for "his brilliant, lucid and systematic .. lectures" [D.S.B.] and numerous pioneering publications. In 1888 Waldeyer had also coined the term 'chromosome'.Connolly Norman (1853-1908), Superintendent from 1886 to 1908 of the Richmond Asylum (later Grangegorman Mental Hospital), was the first Irish doctor to campaign publicly against the futility of asylum detention as an effective therapy and was an early advocate of "care in the community" and "voluntary admissions". There is an allusion to him in James Joyce's Ulysses where an acquaintance of Dedalus and Mulligan is described as being "up in dittyville with Connolly Norman".
Vide: Gordon M. Shepherd Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine, (1991), p.211Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. XIV, p.125-127