See Also: Biography of Augustus D. Waller
Waller - Father and Son Physiologists
Today an internet search yields many 'hits' for AD Waller, but, in the past, it was AD Waller's father, Augustus Volney Waller (1816-1870), who had the greater claim to fame, through his description of Wallerian degeneration.
Born in Kent, England, AV Waller spent much of his childhood in France and studied medicine at Paris, his MD thesis entitled "Percussion Mediate." His early research interests focused on the use of microscopy to demonstrate leukocyte emigration, using the transilluminated human prepuce and the frog tongue as models.
His work on nerve degeneration, distal to a cut, came from experiments where he studied the histology of frog tongues after glosso-pharygeal and hypoglossal nerve section. He concluded from this work that the nerve cell body is the source of an axon's nutriment (Physiological Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1850; 140:423-429).
The older Waller had a long term interest in the effects of 'vagus pressure,' using modern carotid sinus compression techniques, but he never appears to have linked this to any vasodepressor or cardio-inhibitory response (Burchell, HB. PACE, 1988; 11:1499-1501).
Over the years, AV Waller shifted, back and forth, from clinical practice to laboratory research, in Kensington, Bonn, Paris, Birmingham, Bruges, and Geneva. Some of these moves were prompted by ill-health, at first a chronic fever that invalided him for two years, then a heart condition which presumably led to his sudden death at the age of 54.
Curious coincidences crop up in any family tree, and it is interesting to note that both AV and AD Waller lost their fathers at the age of 14. AD Waller shared his birthday (July 12th) with William Osler, born seven years earlier in 1849.
AD Waller's daughter, Mary Desiree Waller, became Professor of Physics at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in London, and donated many Waller family papers to that hospital's archives. However because none of his four children married, AD Waller has no living descendants.
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The Electrical Signs of Life
A great passion begs to be shared, and so It was for Wailer's love of Physiology. He relied on live demonstrations of electrical phenomena that he, arid others, had unmasked, and he fashioned eloquent lectures, with grand titles, on the basic principles of living things. His 1q03 "Eight Lectures on the Signs of Life from their Electrical Aspect" (EP Dutton, New York) Is such a collection, and it is aimed, not just at those attending the University of London, but at all students of learning. He identifies with the English essayist. John Ruskin, who said, "the greatest thing a human soul does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw."
When all is said and done, the subject matter of Physiology is Life, and the signs by which he could recognize matter to be living were:
- its reducing, or deoxygenating, power,
- its exhalation of carbon dioxide,
- Its excitability, and,
- the electrical signs of its chemical activity.
Waller pursued this last sign with all the passion of a great experimentalist. 
Fig. 8. - Frog's eyeball between unpolarisable electrodes for demonstration of the electrical effects of light and of electrical excitation. The circuit from the eye is completed through a compensator, secondary coil, and a galvanometer. The arrows through the eyeball and galvanometer indicate the direction of the initial current and of the normal response. Arrows near the compensator wires indicate the direction of a compensating counter-current
Whether they were currents obtained from dormant seeds, frog retina, or the petiole of an Ivy leaf, his arguments were vigorous and convincing, as well as teasing and entertaining.
He recorded responses to tetanization, induction shocks, galvanic shocks, and electrocution in tissues as diverse as frog eyeball, salmon crystalline lens, eel skin, cat footpad and frog tongue. He drew on the work of Du Bois-Reymond, Gotch, Burdon-Sanderson, Reid and others, but like all good physiologists, believed only what he himself could discover or reproduce.
Fig. 22.- Frog's eyeball, induction coil and galvanometer In series. Effects of single break Induction shocks In positive and negative directions before and after "electrocution" by strong tetanisation.
He spoke of the two chief moments in the life of every explorer - the moment of discovery~ and the moment of disclosure, when the first pleasure is shared with others. As an explorer in the realm of Physiology, Waller voyaged into the newly discovered world of biological electricity and returned to tell all about the magical sights he had seen.
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Electrophysiologic Research Equipment
Waller's laboratory tools were limited, but effective. In his "Eight Lectures on the Signs of Life from their Electrical Aspect" (EP Dutton, New York, 1903) he outlines the characteristics of key items, in terms any student could understand. 1. The Galvanometer.
"The galvanometer may be looked upon . . .as a manometer, measuring electrical pressures just as one measures blood pressure . . .""The style of instrument matters very little so long as its sensibility can be easily ascertained and adjusted." "The delicacy of the galvanometer should be such that 0.001 volt through a megohm gives a deflection of 10 cms. at a distance of 2 meters.
2. The Stimulator.
Waller used the terms Compensator, or Potentiometer, for this means of supplying a standard voltage. "In its simplest, and for all ordinary purposes, sufficiently accurate form, the compensating arrangement consists of a Leclanche cell, joined up with two resistance-boxes, which act as a numerator and denominator of any convenient fraction of a volt."
The stimulator would be hooked up to electrodes, a keyboard and a galvanometer.
3. Photographic Recording.
"It is possible to photograph and take readings at the same time. . ." using "a vertical opaque screen, with a narrow horizontal slit, behind which a phonographic plate is let down by clockwork." "The accessory apparatus, containing the sensitive plate, consists in a box, 1/2 meter in height, which carries the scale, and the horizontal slit, 1/2 mm. in width, upon its anterior surface. The plate, which is in a photographic carrier suspended by a thread from a wheel revolving by clockwork, descends vertically. The deflections of the galvanometer are recorded laterally upon the line of horizontal slit. An electric bell gives the warning when the plate has completed its descent. FIG. 58. -- Galvanograph
4. Lippmann's Capillary Electrometer.
Unsophisticated galvanometers were not sufficiently rapid in their response to reliably reflect transients like an electrocardiogram. Therefore Waller initially resorted to the Lippmann Electrometer. Instead of voltage changes being registered by the deflection of a needle, the capillary electrometer relied on fluctuations in height of the meniscus of a column of mercury. Even so there was a considerable lag in the system and painstaking corrections had to be hand calculated for every deflection. FIG. 66. - An electrometer-curve of the electrical variation of the human heart; the values calculated from the record of the mercury level are given as a dotted line. (From Einthoven, Pflüger's Archiv, vol. 60, 1895.) Furthermore the instrument was exquisitely sensitive, and the slightest environmental tremor could ruin a vital experiment. It was this last weakness that led Einthoven to switch to the more robust string galvanometer. The Lippmann electrometer was the mainstay of recording small (i.e. biologic) electrical currents at the end of the nineteenth century. It consisted of a very fine mercury column with a superimposed layer of dilute sulfuric acid. Each was attached to a terminal of the electrical generator to be measured. Measurements were of the movement of the meniscus of the mercury column.
Waller's l887 "electrocardiogram" was recorded by a Lippmann electrometer. Courtesy Bakken Museum
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Waller's Early Electrocardiograms
While Waller's first electrocardiographic observations date to a paper published in 1887 (J Physiol 1887; 8:227-234), his first public demonstration to the physiology community was at the International Congress of Physiology held at Basle in 1889. It was to be a demonstration that he repeated many times, and one that is recorded, in his own words, in his monograph "The Electrical Action of the Human Heart" (University of London Press, 1922).
"The disc of light upon the transparent screen in front of you is from the field of a microscope illuminated from behind. The vertical shadow is that of a fine capillary tube filled half with mercury, half with sulphuric acid - viz. of a Lippmann's capillary electrometer."
"The vessels of salt water into which I now immerse my two hands, are connected with the two poles of the electrometer, the right hand vessel to the sulphuric acid, the left hand to the mercury. You see that the mercury pulsates with a rhythm that is obviously that of my heart. And those of you who are close to the screen may be able to distinguish that with each beat there is a double movement of the mercury column."
Einthoven, whose work was inspired by similar demonstrations by Waller, is often credited with introducing the term 'electrocardiogram' but, in 1912, during a visit to England, he made it quite clear that the term belonged to Waller (Lancet 1912; 1:853-61). "It gives me a special pleasure to bring to remembrance here that the human EKG was first recorded by a London physiologist, Augustus D. Waller who also introduced the term 'electrocardiogram' into science." Einthoven's contribution was in adapting the string galvanometer to the EKG application, and perfecting an instrument that was useful in clinical research and practice.
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