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Elliot S. Valenstein. The War of the Soups and the Sparks: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute over How Nerves Communicate. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. xviii + 237 pp. Ill. $31.00, £19.50 (0-231-13588-2).
The elucidation of how nerves transmit chemically is one of the foundational advances in neuroscience, since it helps to explain the workings of brain, muscle, and nerve in terms broadly understood. The scientific basis for this story has already been told by Joseph D. Robinson through elegant enumeration of the sequence of key experiments, in his superb book Mechanisms of Synoptic Transmission: Bridging the Gaps (1890-1990) (2001). Elliot Valenstein now addresses the human side of the story. Three great investigators dominate this account: Otto Loewi, Henry Dale, and Walter Cannon. The unfolding narrative brings out the tension between the electrically based view, championed by physiologists, and the chemical view, which has been linked to the emergence of pharmacology as an academic discipline. The resolution of this question starts with...