Abstract
When Starling moved to his new department at University College in 1899, it occupied the top floor in the north wing, above the Slade School of Fine Art. (The north wing is on the left side of the quadrangle as one enters from Gower Street.) From its beginnings in 1871, the Slade had been one of the college’s most successful departments; within four years it was full to capacity, with 220 students, including many of the college’s first women (Harte and North, 1991). In the basement of the north wing was the chemistry department, forming the bottom layer of an interesting academic sandwich.
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References
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Bernard C. Mémoire sur le Pancréas. Paris: Bailliere, 1856 (Translated by J. Henderson. London: Academic Press, 1985). Bernard showed that tying the pancreatic duct often produces no pathological changes in the pancreas. This may be due to the presence of an accessory duct, (present in 50% of dogs) which enables pancreatic juice to bypass the blockage and enter the duodenum via this alternative route. Or the tied duct may remodel itself around the ligature, and make a new channel outside the knot, so it is slightly surprising that Starling expected a ligature of the pancreatic duct to have a significant effect on the structure of the gland. He may not have known the French literature as well as he knew the German.
The “Brown Dog” trial is from the Times law reports of November 15-18, 1903.
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Needham J. 1936. Order and Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 80. Joseph Needham includes this tantalizing footnote: “According to local tradition the word ‘hormone’ was born in the hall of Caius College, Cambridge. Schäfer or Starling was brought in to dine by [WB] Hardy and the question of nomenclature was raised. WT Vesey, an authority on Pindar, suggested óρμαω) (excite), and the thing was done.” Needham was a fellow of Caius College; his footnote doesn’t suggest that he was there at the time. The event is not dated. In another publication, Schäfer gives Starling full credit for introducing “hormone” into the language. This is consistent with it being Starling, not Schäfer, dining with Hardy in Caius College on that particular evening. Schäfer, in fact, gave credit to Starling for the word when he was speaking at an International Medical Congress, in London, reported in the British Medical Journal, p. 380, August 16, 1913. Schäfer suggested that “hormone” be reserved for stimulatory agents; he proposed “chalone” for inhibitory substances. Starling was at the meeting, and said that knowledge of hormones was so slight that it was too early to propose such a classification.
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Henderson, J. (2005). Secretin, Politics, and the New Institute. In: A Life of Ernest Starling. People and Ideas Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7526-2_4
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