Burdon Sanderson and Vitalism

Abstract

IN his interesting and sympathetic notice, in NATURE of March 21, of the Memoir of Burdon Sanderson, your reviewer discusses Burdon Sanderson's attitude towards “vitalism”, and thinks that the editors of the Memoir (my sister and myself) have scarcely represented this attitude satisfactorily. Our task in this connection was a somewhat difficult one, and we may have failed in it; but the grounds of the difficulty are of so much general scientific interest that it may perhaps be worth while to refer to them more fully. We quoted in the Memoir from the following letter, written by Burdon Sanderson from Algiers in 1904 to Miss Florence Buchanan, D.Sc. (who was then assisting him), with reference to a general paper which he was endeavouring, in the face of ill-health, to prepare on the general results of his electro-physiological work.