The Croonian lecture on the origin and development of the nervous system studied by the methods of experimental embryology

Abstract

Permit me first to thank the Royal Society for the honour of the invitation to deliver the Croonian Lecture, which I appreciate as one of the highest distinctions that may be conferred upon a biologist. I am reminded, too, of a personal relation that may have something to do with my presence here to-day. Fifty years ago, in 1883, the Croonian Lecture was given by H. Newell Martin, who on that occasion described his epoch-making work on the isolation of the mammalian heart. It was but a few years later that, as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins Uni­ versity, I attended Martin’s lectures on general biology and there received the first inspiration to follow my chosen calling. The awakening of my serious interest in biology was thus due to one who has filled this place before me, one whom I shall always remember with gratitude and respect. Although many of my predecessors have concerned themselves with the nervous system, no one has considered it in this place from the stand­ point of embryology. It therefore seems appropriate to direct your attention to this aspect of the subject to-day, more especially to the part that experiment has played in its advancement. The field covered is almost entirely a development of the twentieth century and is still in the rough. No well-rounded account of it is at present possible, so that I shall not have the satisfaction of showing