From sympathy to reflex: Marshall Hall and his opponents

RUTH LEYS, From sympathy to reflex: Marshall Hall and his opponents, repr. with a new preface of 'Alison versus Hall: aspects of the formation and reception of the reflex concept in Britain', Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1976, New York and London, Garland, 1990, pp. 549, $100.00 (0-8240-0042-0). Leys is right in lamenting the dearth of research on the history of neurophysiology in early nineteenth-century Britain and this publication-a xeroxcopy of her 1976 Ph.D. thesis with a brief additional Preface but also with a change of title-represents a useful contribution to the literature. It is a pity that the original and more appropriate title-Alison versus Hall. aspects of the formation and reception of the reflex concept in Britain-has not been retained since the interesting figure of W. P. Alison, whom she has been at pains to retrieve from relative obscurity and who rather than Marshall Hall is her leading man in this work, is not readily suggested by the new title. Although Leys makes reference to the controversies associated with Hall's concept of reflex action, she does not analyse the highly significant in-fighting and debate within the Royal Society, the institution above all others in which Hall sought acceptance and success. Furthermore, whilst Hall was active in the early days of the British Medical Association, he was never aggressively political, being more concerned with promoting and preserving his own scientific reputation. Despite Hall's sometimes exaggerated opinion of the value of his own work on neuroscience, even he never, as this book does, claimed to have discovered reflex action. Hall was well aware of the relevant work of predecessors and saw his major contribution as one of linking, within a common framework, a range of hitherto disparate physiological phenomena recognisable today as reflex actions. As Leys makes clear, he presented a mechanistic explanatory model which, contrary to the prevailing view, excluded the soul and even more importantly excluded sensation as a necessary concomitant. The work shows a pleasing familiarity with much of the relevant literature, and will be a valuable resource for other researchers in the field.