W. H. Gaskell

Who was W. H. Gaskell?

English Physiologist who investigated the anatomy of the nervous system, particularly the autonomoic nervous system, with John Langley. Gaskell originally worked on the nerve structures in striated muscle in the heart. He then moved on to describe the symathetic or 'voluntary' nervous system that carries signals to the skeletal muscles in response to external stimuli. -From Random House Webster's Dictionary of Scientists (1997)

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Walter Holbrook Gaskell (1 November 1847; Naples - 7 September 1914; Great Shelford) was a British physiologist.

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 the University of Cambridge, focusing on the physiology of the heart and nervous system. 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 of heart block and the experimental demonstration of the myogenic origin of the heartbeat. His research also laid the foundations for investigation into cardiac arhythmias. He also made progress in mapping the sympathetic nervous system.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1882, winning one of its Royal Medals in 1889 for his contributions both to cardiac physiology and to the anatomy and physiology of the sympathetic nervous system. From the Wikipedia article "W. H. Gaskell" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.