[Erratum inre "Pharmacology Lore...: Rat hearts and London tap water". Originally published 07/10/06]
In response to a brisk letter from Dr. Caffeine (see comments), the authors of a previous blog post (see below) would like to retract their assertion that Sydney Ringer was in any way, or at any time, guilty of complacency with regard to the quality of water used in his experiments. It appears that the perpetrator of the tap water fiasco was, in fact, Sydney's technician, a certain Mr. Fielder. The authors would like to apologise profusely to the descendants of Dr. Ringer, and his fans, for this oversight and for besmirching - nay, outright befouling - the good name of a great scientist. For more information regarding the newly emerging well-documented evidence warranting this retraction please download this article, by Dr. David Miller**, from the The Physiological Society website. This does, of course, slightly attenuate the veracity of our conclusion that "being sloppy pays off sometimes", but we feel that further evidence may nevertheless possibly justify our claims if we look hard enough and wait long enough.
** Winner of the Physiological Society's Paton Prize (2007) for his work on the life and times of the gentleman and scientist, Sydney Ringer.
Here's a pretty well known (and likely embellished) factoid from the Old Days. In the early 1880's, Sydney Ringer* (he of Ringer's Solution fame) observed that isolated rat hearts would maintain their contractions for far longer when suspended in saline solution made up with London tap water, than when suspended in saline solution made up with distilled water.
What was so special about the stuff made with London tap water? Well, London tap water was very hard at the time (probably still is), and thus contained significant amounts of free Ca2+. Distilled water, of course, has trace levels of Ca2+ at most. No Ca2+, no muscle contraction. Eureka.
By all accounts, it seems Sydney only used tap water out of laziness. So, it just goes to show that being sloppy pays off sometimes.
References:
Carafoli, E. (2002) Calcium signaling: A tale for all seasons. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 99:1115-1122. Free online.
Miller, D.J (2007) A solution for the heart: the life of Sydney Ringer (1836-1910). The Physiological Society.
Miller, D.J. (2004) Sydney Ringer; physiological saline, calcium and the contraction of the heart. J. Physiol. 555:585-587. Free online.
Ringer, S. (1883) Physiological saline, calcium and contraction of the heart. J. Physiol. 4:29-42; 222; 370. Free .pdf files for download.
* Apparently the poor geezer doesn't even have a Wikipedia article in his honour. Shocking.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Pharmacology Lore...: Rat hearts and London tap water...
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4 comments:
I never heard of that Ringer paper before, but it's pretty funny. I bet the plain tap water from my city would probably make a great buffer, though you'd probably get Iron toxicity.
Though didn't Hodgkin and Huxley do their work just in Sea Water? Good thing they didn't use like Mediterian Sea water, it probably contains all sorts of poisons.
Mediterranean sea water? Heavens. That provokes terrible visions of Hodgkin trying to navigate an electrode between floating condoms, flakes of faeces and a three-eyed jellyfish.
Actually, you've inspired me to track down their original papers on the squid axon. I'll post on them later.
I can't resist correcting a shocking criticism of my hero Sydney R. The 'laziness' (in using tap rather than distilled water) was down to Ringer's technician, Mr Fielder (or Fielder!!**!! as he was probably known). Rather than just dumping the results- and this is what makes him great - Ringer checked out what had happened, had the tap water analysed and thus sorted out the situation. Calcium was born as physiologically significant!
You can read all about it (and Ringer) and download the pdf at:
www.physoc.org/site/cms/contentDocumentLibraryView.asp?chapter=103&category=382
PS Hodgkin and Huxley used Plymouth (UK) seawater .. no Med muck.
Dear Dr. Caffeine,
In light of your enlightened comments, we have revised our manuscript and thoroughly retracted our unwarranted, unprofessional, and ill-researched accusation of aqueous impropriety by the great Sydney Ringer.
We hope you accept our apologies.
Regards,
DSKS
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