- W. H. Gaskell
Walter Holbrook Gaskell (
1 November 1847 ;Naples -7 September 1914 ;Great Shelford ) was a Britishphysiologist .The son of barrister John Dakin Gaskell, he was educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge , receiving his BA in 1869. He worked in the Physiological Laboratory of theUniversity of Cambridge , focusing on the physiology of theheart and the vascular andnervous system s. His research was central to the understanding of cardiac physiology. Key discoveries included the sequence of cardiac contraction, dual autonomic control of the heart, introduction of the concept ofheart block and the experimental demonstration of the myogenic origin of the heartbeat. His research also laid the foundations for investigation intocardiac arhythmia s. He also made progress in mapping thesympathetic nervous system . In 1881, he was the first to describe the effects of extracellular pH on cardiac and vascular tissues.He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1882, winning one of itsRoyal Medal s in 1889 for his contributions both to cardiac physiology and to the anatomy and physiology of the sympathetic nervous system.External links
* [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=(Surname='Gaskell') The Royal Society: Walter Holbrook Gaskell (1847-1914)]
* [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1753 Royal Medal winners prior to 1900]
* [http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=ImageView.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsq
]Further reading
*JNL (1914–1915) "Proc Roy Soc Lond B Biol Sci" 88:xxvii–xxxvi (Obituary)
*Silverman ME, Upshaw CB. (2002) Walter Gaskell and the understanding of atrioventricular conduction and block. "J Am Coll Cardiol" 39: 1574-1580 PMID 12020482
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