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1858 An Inquiry Regarding the Parts of the Nervous System Which Regulate the Contractions of the Arteries

The first of these series of experiments was designed to satisfy a contemporary dispute between physiologists, concerning the origin of the influence exercised over blood vessel diameter (calibre) by the sympathetic nervous system. The dispute began when Albrecht von Haller formulated a new theory known as Sensibility and Irritability in his 1752 thesis De partibus corporis humani sensibilibus et irritabilibus. The dispute had been debated since the middle of the 18th century. Haller put forward the view that contractability was a power inherent in the tissues which possessed it, and was fundamental fact of physiology. It concerned the property of irratability, the supposed automatic response of muscular tissue, especially visceral tissue, to external stimulus, that caused them to contract when stimulated. Even as late as 1853, highly respected textbooks, for example William Benjamin Carpenter Principles of Human Physiology stated the doctrine of 'irritability' was a fact beyond dispute, and was still considered contentious when John Hughes Bennett created the Physiology article for the 8th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica in 1859.

In his experiments that he started in the autumn of 1856, Lister used a microscope fitted with ocular micrometer to measure the diameter of blood vessels in a frogs web. In a before and after experiment, he ablated parts of the central nervous system and also before and after, with the splitting of the sciatic nerve. Lister concluded that blood vessel tone was controlled by the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord. This refuted Wharton's conclusions, in his paper Observations on the State of the Blood and the Blood-Vessels in Inflammation. who was not able to confirm that the control of blood vessels of the hind legs was dependent upon spinal centres.