John Newport Langley

LANGLEY, John Newport (1852–1925), one of the most distinguished physiologists of recent times. In 1872, while a student at Cambridge University, he began working in Foster's physiological laboratory. Upon graduation, he was appointed lecturer in histology and physiology. After Foster's death, he was elected to his chair. All of Langley's scientific works group around three main themes and constitute an indivisible whole. The first theme concerns the physiology of the salivary glands. Following a series of individual papers, Langley produced a major work in the form of a chapter on the salivary glands in Schäfer's textbook of physiology. Almost the entire remainder of Langley's life was devoted to the second theme, the question of the autonomic or vegetative nervous system.

Langley is the creator of the modern doctrine of the vegetative nervous system. As a result of his work, which was rare in its thoughtfulness, systematic nature, and completeness, he provided a clear scheme of the general organizational plan of the autonomic nervous system and its interrelations with the systems of other organs. He also developed the classical "nicotine method" as applied to the study of the autonomic nervous system. Langley's third main theme is the elaboration of the question of the precise localization of the action of individual poisons in tissues and the establishment of the doctrine of "receptive" substances. In addition, mention must be made of Langley's work on nerve degeneration and regeneration, as well as histological studies on the brains of dogs operated on by the famous Friedrich Goltz. Langley published 171 scientific papers, not counting numerous works carried out under his supervision and published by his collaborators. The most major ones are: Salivary glands (Textbook of physiology, ed. by E. Schäfer, Edinburgh—London, 1898); Das sympathische und das verwandte nervöse System der Wirbeltiere (Ergebnisse der Physiologie, Band II, 1903); The autonomic nervous system (Cambridge, 1921; Russian edition, part 1, Moscow—Leningrad, 1925). Alongside his scientific research, Langley bore a heavy burden from 1894 onwards as the editor of The Journal of Physiology (London).