Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: The collected papers of Sydney Ringer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![exception of a sliort note to the Physiological Society, published about two years later.^ The first of the remarkable series of papers which record Einger’s discoveries of the actions of inorganic salts (or ions) upon the beat of the heart, is contained in the third volume of the Journal of Physiology, 1881-2, under the title ‘ Concerning the influence exerted by each of the Constituents of the Blood on the Contraction of the Ventricle.’ This first paper demonstrates clearly Ringer’s scientific insight and doggedness of purpose. He shows that certain changes in the ventricular beat, which, at this stage, he thinks are due to normal saline (0‘T5 per cent, solution of sodium chloride), but which in a later paper he finds out are due to a trace of calcium salt in the supply of Hew River Water with wliicli the saline has been made up—he shows that these changes can be obviated if a certain amount of dried blood is added to the saline. Proceeding further, he finds that diluted white-of-egg added to the saline produces a like result in maintaining the normal heart-beat. The ordinary investigator would probably have stopped here, thinking he had done well and probed matters to the limit. Hot so Ringer, and this is precisely how he made the first step that counts so much towards his great discovery. Having discovered that both dried blood extract and diluted egg-white act upon the contracting ventricle, he does not jump to 1. This note takes up the matter of the supposed action of distilled water on Tubifex, and is characteristic of Ringer, both in its carefulness and exactitude and in the candour and honesty with which it admits the truth of Locke’s position : that the supposed poisonous and disintegrating action of distilled water obtained by distillation from a metal still and condenser are due to infinitesimal traces of heavy metals in the water. He first of all re-distilled from glass thirty litres of the type of water used originally with poisonous effects, and now found the distillate harmless, and the residue to contain copper and be violently poisonous until after exposure to air for some days. Then he collected Nature’s own distillate in the form of rainwater on his Yorkshire moorside in earthenware vessels, and demonstrated that this water was harmless to the organisms althouo-h it contained no t^’ace of calcium salts. On placinq’ a few small pieces of copper filin''a in this innocuous water it became poisonous and disintegrated Tubifex in a few hours. As a result of this careful enquirv he frankly admits that : ‘ These experiments appear to me to establish Locke’s conclusion that copper in even infinitesimal ({uantities will disintegrate Tubifex, whilst water free from copper or other heavy metals, and without any salts such as calcium salts, can sustain the life of Tubifex.’ In spite of this disappointment it is interesting to observe Ringer’s mental activity in seizing the opportunity to demonstrate to the hilt the most important fact which he had earlier observed as to the antagonism of the potassium and calcium effects. He says, ‘ I next tested with this rainwater from the moors the antagonism between potassium chloride and calcium chloride. I nlaced Tubifex in a 0*1 per cent, solution of potassium chloride, in about four hours they were almost motionless, and with the microscope I was unable to see the vessels contract; they appeared quite paralysed except just below the head of the animals. I then placed the Tubifex in a 0*1 per cent. KCl and 0*1 per cent. CaCR and almost at once spontaneous movement increased, and in five minutes they became quite active. Seven hours later they were moving energetically; before movement was so much restored the mici'oscope showed that the vessels, even to the tail were contracting vieoroTisly.’ (Proc. Physiol. Soc., December, lft97, Jovim. of Physiol., Vol. XXI, p]n 14, 15.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28036530_0001_0021.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
