2: Molecular Pores
1 Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is the molecular blueprint of our cells and RNA the messenger molecule that carries the information stored in DNA to the protein factories in the cell.
2 Rod MacKinnon won the Nobel prize in 2003, together with Peter Agre (whose story is told in Chapter 8).
3: Acting on Impulse
1 Hodgkin always attributed his success to chance and good fortune.
2 Huxley came from a distinguished family. He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s famous bulldog and a great promoter of the theory of evolution; and his half-brothers were the novelist Aldous Huxley and the biologist Julian Huxley. Hodgkin also came from an eminent academic family, many of whom were historians.
4: Mind the Gap
1 Despite its extreme virulence, botulinum toxin is easily destroyed by heating; however, the bacterial spores can survive a temperature of 100 °C for two hours.
2 It is ironic that ‘gift’ in German translates as ‘poison’, as what was indeed a gift to the West was poison for Hitler; the scientists he expelled helped the Allies win the war.
3 At the end of World War II, Feldberg was awarded a considerable sum of ‘restitution money’ from the German government. He generously used it to set up a fund for the furtherance of good relations between German and British scientists: each year it awards a handsome prize and financial support for one British scientist to visit Germany, and one German scientist to come to the UK.
6: Les Poissons Trembleurs
1 Socrates dryly replies that he resembles a torpedo only if the fish produces torpidity in itself as well as others, because the reason he baffles Meno is because he is confused himself.
2 This was the price in North Carolina, USA. No doubt they would have been more costly in the UK. A guinea is 21 shillings – one pound and 10 pence in current money.
3 Watts equals volts times amps.
4 Each ampulla consists of a small capsule that is connected to an opening on the surface of the skin by a jelly-filled electrically conductive canal. The receptor cells sit in the wall of the ampulla. They respond to a difference in potential between the canal lumen (which is continuous with the seawater) and the body’s interior, which, in turn, stimulates electrical impulses in the nerve fibres innervating the ampulla. Cutting the nerves to the ampullae abolishes the shark’s ability to sense weak electric fields, conclusively demonstrating that the ampullae serve as electroreceptor organs.
7: The Heart of the Matter
1 This was Herbert Gladstone (son of the more famous William), who was Home Secretary from 1905–10.
2 The mechanism is unclear.
3 He called his machine after Thanatos, the Greek god of death.
8: Life and Death
1 Most of the 150 to 200 litres filtered each day is absorbed in the upper part of the kidney tubule, by other kinds of water channel.
2 Raindrops do not (uselessly) trigger the trap because two hairs must be touched within 20 seconds of one another to produce a response.
9: The Doors of Perception
1 Aldous Huxley took the title of his famous book The Doors of Perception, about his experience of taking mescaline, from Blake’s poem. The name of the 1960s pop group, The Doors, refers to Huxley’s book, and through that back to Blake’s poem. Blake in turn takes the idea from Plato, who famously remarked that we are like prisoners in a cave who see the outside world only as shadows on the wall, so that what we perceive is but an illusion of reality.
2 Too much vitamin A is very bad for you. The livers of some Antarctic mammals, such as polar bears and seals, contain toxic levels of vitamin A. The 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic expedition lost all their supplies and one of their party down a crevasse. The other two expedition members had to eat their huskies to try to stay alive – but Xavier Mertz died anyway, probably because he ate too much of the liver and developed fatal vitamin A poisoning.
3 People can see even with the lens removed, as only about 30 per cent of the focusing power of the eye comes from the lens. The cornea does the rest. Glasses can also help focus the light in those without a lens.
4 Later it was decided that colour blindness had nothing to do with it and that the driver had simply ignored the signal.
5 Because sound is produced by molecules colliding with one another to produce pressure waves, sound cannot occur in a vacuum. In space, no one can hear you scream and you cannot hear an explosion.
6 A similar effect is observed if you shout underwater – the sound travels less far than in air.
7 Of the band The Who.
8 Pickled artichokes don’t work.
9 Contrary to what it says in the textbooks, the different types of taste buds are evenly distributed over the surface of the tongue.
10 The name derives from ‘sauerstoff’, the German name for ‘acid’, which is a solution containing a high concentration of hydrogen ions.
11 There are many more genes, but not all produce functional proteins.
12 Interestingly, in humans the same receptor detects the pungent oils in wasabi.
12: Shocking Treatment
1 For a video, see the Wikipedia entry on Topsy (elephant).
2 One of his machines can be seen at his house in London.
3 Practising as a physician without qualifications was not uncommon at that time.
Further Reading
Here are suggestions for further reading. I only include books and articles that are of general interest and readily accessible. For those who wish to know more, a more detailed bibliography may be found on my website.
Books
Ashcroft, Frances (2000), Ion Channels and Disease, San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Bakken, Earl (1999), One Man’s Full Life, Minneapolis, MI: Medtronic Inc.
Bryson, Bill (ed.) (2010), Seeing Further, London: Harper Press.
Darwin, Charles (1859), On the Origin of Species, London: John Murray.
Darwin, Charles (1875), Insectivorous Plants, London: John Murray.
Finger, Stanley and Marco Piccolino (2011), The Shocking History of Electric Fishes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gregory, Richard (1997), Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hodgkin, Alan (1992), Chance and Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hofmann, Albert (1980), LSD: My Problem Child, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Holmes, Richard (2009), The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, London: Harper Press.
von Humboldt, Alexander ([1834] 1995), Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, London: Penguin Books.
Huxley, Aldous (1954), The Doors of Perception, London: Chatto and Windus.
Ings, Simon (2007), The Eye: A Natural History, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Lane, Nick (2009), Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, London: Profile Books.
Lomas, Robert (1999), The Man who Invented the Twentieth Century, London: Headline Press.
Martin, Paul (2003), Counting Sheep, London: Flamingo.
Medawar, Jean and David Pyke (2001), Hitler’s Gift: Scientists who Fled Nazi Germany, London: Piatkus.
The Oxford Companion to the Body (2001), Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Oxford Companion to the Mind (2004), Richard Gregory (ed.), 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Powers, Francis Gary and Curt Gentry (1971), Operation Overflight, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
de Quincey, Thomas ([1822], 1986), Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quintilian (2002), The Orator’s Education, trans. D. L. Russell, Oxford: Loeb Classical Library.
Raeburn, Paul (1995), The Last Harvest, New York: Simon and Schuster.
Rippon, Nicola (2009), The
Plot to Kill Lloyd George, London: Wharncliffe Books.
Sacks, Oliver (1996), The Island of the Colour-blind. London: Picador.
Sacks, Oliver (1986) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, London: Picador.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft ([1818]), Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt-Nielsen, Knut (1997), Animal Physiology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Streatfeild, Dominic (2001), Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, London: Virgin Publishing.
Syson, Lydia (2008), Doctor of Love: James Graham and his Celestial Bed. Richmond: Alma Books.
Wesley, John (1760), Desideratum: Or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful. By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense, London: W. Flexney.
Articles
Feldberg, W. (1977), ‘The early history of synaptic and neuromuscular transmission by acetylcholine: reminiscences of an eye-witness’, in A. L. Hodgkin et al., The Pursuit of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harlow, J. M. (1848), ‘Passage of an Iron Rod Through the Head’, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. 39, pp. 389–93.
Hodgkin, A. L. (1977), ‘Chance and design in electrophysiology: an informal account of certain experiments on nerve carried out between 1934 and 1952’, in A. L. Hodgkin et al., The Pursuit of Nature.
Horgan, J. (2005), ‘The forgotten era of brain chips’, Scientific American (October 2005).
Kalmijn, A. J. (1971), ‘The electric sense of sharks and rays’, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 55, 371–83.
Kellaway, P. (1946), ‘The part played by electric fish in the early history of bioelectricity and electrotherapy’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 20, pp. 112–37.
Krider, E. P. (2006), ‘Benjamin Franklin and Lightning Rods’, Physics Today (January 2006),
Lissmann, H. W. (1951), ‘Continuous electrical signals from the tail of the fish Gymnarchus niloticus Cuv.’, Nature, vol. 167, p. 201.
Loewi, O. (1960), ‘Autobiographic sketch’, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 4, pp. 3–25.
Miesenböck, G. (2008), ‘Neural light show: scientists use genetics to map and control brain functions’, Scientific American (September 2008).
Quinton, P. (1999), ‘Physiological basis of cystic fibrosis: a historical perspective’, Physiological Reviews, vol. 79, S3–S22.
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this book without a great deal of help. I am grateful to many of my scientific colleagues for reading the chapters, helping ensure my facts are accurate and providing invaluable comments on content and style. I thank Richard Boyd, David Clapham, Nathan Denton, Carolina Lahmann, Chris Miller, Mike Sanguinetti and Walter Stühmer for bravely reading the whole book. For reading individual chapters or parts of chapters, I thank Jonathan Ashmore, Mike Bennett, Pietro Corsi, Keith Dorrington, Clive Ellory, Ian Forsythe, Uta Frith, Fiona Gribble, Andrew Halestrap, Judy Heiny, Edith Hummler, Peter Hunter, John Mollon, Keith Moore, Erwin Neher, Denis Noble, David Paterson, Marco Piccolino, Andy King, Geoffrey Raisman, Bernhard Rossier, Julian Schroeder, Paolo Tammaro, Tilly Tansey, Irene Tracy, Louise Upton and Gary Yellen. I thank Peter Brown for help with the Latin and Greek references, and for translating some of the original texts; Michaela Iberl for translating some German papers; Mathilde Lafond for help with the French translations; and Vivien Raisman for providing a modern translation of the Edwin Smith papyrus. Marco Piccolini and Bryan Ward-Perkins supplied historical information and advice, Andrew Forge provided the pictures of the hair cells, and Peter Atkins lent me his Galvani texts. Bruce Barker Benfield at the Bodleian Library very kindly showed me Mary Shelley’s original manuscripts of Frankenstein and unearthed a letter from Percy Bysshe Shelley. I am particularly grateful to Peter and Karin Hunter for providing sanctuary in their beautiful home in New Zealand while I struggled with the first two chapters. Many friends and colleagues supplied me with interesting stories and I apologize to those whose stories or scientific research I was unable to include. Needless to say, any errors or infelicities that remain are my own.
There is an Italian proverb that states ‘Se non è vero, è ben trovato’, which roughly translates as ‘Even if it’s not true, it is a good story’. I have tried to ensure that the science is factually correct, but it is more difficult to be as confident that the many historical stories I tell are completely accurate or correctly attributed. In some cases, names have been changed to protect an individual’s identity.
I thank my friend and wonderful agent Felicity Bryan for encouraging me to write another book and never losing confidence that I would eventually do so; my editors at Penguin, Helen Conford and William Goodlad, for valuable comments, wise advice and listening to my writer’s agonies; Louisa Watson and Tertia Softley for their careful copy-editing; and Patrick Loughran for his assistance with the pictures. I am indebted to Ronan Mahon for the beautiful line drawings. I am also grateful to my brother and sister for valuable criticism and advice, and my fellow wordsmith, Chris Miller, for helping to coin a few choice phrases. Most of all, I thank Tertia Softley and Iara Cury, who tracked down many obscure articles, winkled many books out of the Bodleian Library and generally kept me sane, as well as the members of my research team for their patience and forbearance when I spent the weekends working on this book instead of writing their papers, reading their theses or applying for more grant money to fund our research.
Credits
Image “Cerebelo de paloma: celulas de Purkinje y granulares,” reprinted by permission of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Cajal Legacy. Instituto Cajal (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.
Oil painting by Edmund Bristow (Dispensing of medical electricity, 1824) reprinted by permission of Wellcome Library, London.
Excerpt from “Goodness Gracious Me” by Herbert Kretzmer reprinted with permission of Berlin Associates Limited.
Excerpt from Brian Turner, Here, Bullet reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books.
Extract from “Newdigate Poem” from Verses by Hilaire Belloc reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop.
Excerpt from Discourses by Jo Shapcott, published in Discourses: Poems for the Royal Institution, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the Royal Institution.
Excerpt from “The Hanging Man” from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes, Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial material copyright © by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpt from “The Tender Place” from Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, Copyright © 1998 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley letter to Ralph Wedgwood (15 Dec. 1810) held by University College. Reprinted with permission from the Master and Fellows of University College, Oxford.
Index
Note: page numbers in italics refer to figures,
and those with suffix ‘n’ refer to notes.
acetylcholine 82–6, 89, 91–8, 104, 165–7, 270
acetylcholine receptor 89, 92, 96,104
effect of nicotine 260
in myasthenia gravis 98
in torpedo ray 127
muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (heart) 165–6
acetylcholinesterase 95–8
achromatopsia 202–3
aconite (aconitine) 75–6
action potential 62
all-or-none nature 58–9, 65, 69, 105
in electric fish electroplaques 123
in heart cells 147, 148, 156–9, 168
in muscle fibres 104–5, 111–13
in nerve cells 62, 65–67, 69
in plants 189–91
mechanism 62, 65–67, 69
transmission of 56–7
see also nerve impulse
acupuncture 278
addiction 257–9, 262
adenosine 256–7
adrenaline 163–4, 167–8
,175
Adrian, Edgar 59–61
Adrian, Richard 110–12
agent SS see saxitoxin
agent TZ see saxitoxin
Agre, Peter 180–81, 313n
Aldini, Giovanni 23, 28–9
alpha-toxin, Staphylococcus aureus 183
alternating current (AC) 298–301
Alzheimer’s disease 270, 311
amber 10–11
amnesia
drug-induced 280, 283
electroconvulsive therapy 295
amoebic dysentery 183
amp (A) 37, 121, 125, 127, 298
definition of 34, 36
Ampère, André-Marie 6, 34
amphetamine 259
ampullae of Lorenzini 130, 132, 314n
amygdala 240, 257, 265, 268, 273
amyl nitrate 164
anaesthesia 95, 237–8
general 279–80, 282
local 223–4
malignant hyperthermia 114–16
anaesthetics 278–81
local 223–4
general 114, 280–81
Andersen, Dorothy 178
angina 163–4
animal electricity 6, 22, 24–6, 32
differences from mains electricity 36–7
antidepressants 263
apoptosis 184–6
aquaporins 180–82
arrow poisons 52, 920–23
artichoke, globe 213, 316n
Ashley, Jack 307
Ashmore, Jonathan 208
ATP 45, 52, 312n
atrial fibrillation 149–50
atrioventricular node 142, 143, 148, 156
Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade) 166
atropine 97, 166
auditory nerve 205, 207–8, 306–7
Aum Shinrikyo sect 95–6
axons 55–7, 56, 57, 232–6
in development 185
myelinated 57, 57–8
squid giant 61–6, 68
The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body Page 33
