Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Ernest Starling

The Man Who Named the Hormone · Physiologist · 1866–1927

The physiologist who proved that organs command one another by chemicals carried in the blood, and who invented the word hormone for them.

Defend these ideas against Starling

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Ernest Starling is that person for 2 topics on the course:

• The Hormones — Sources, Roles and Effects — Biology
• The Menstrual Cycle — Biology

Who was Starling?

Ernest Starling was born in London in 1866 and spent most of his career as professor of physiology at University College London. In 1902, working with William Bayliss — his closest collaborator and his brother-in-law — he cut every nerve running to a dog's pancreas and then introduced acid into its intestine. The pancreas secreted regardless. Since no nervous connection remained, the message could only have been carried in the blood, and the substance carrying it was named secretin. It overturned Pavlov's account of pancreatic secretion as a purely nervous reflex, and Pavlov repeated the experiment himself and accepted the result. In 1905 Starling proposed the word hormone, from the Greek for 'I arouse', for the whole class of such chemical messengers, and in doing so created a discipline. Earlier he had worked out the balance of forces that drives fluid out of a capillary and draws it back — the principle behind tissue fluid and behind filtration in the kidney — and later he established that the heart ejects more when it is filled more. He was never awarded a Nobel Prize despite repeated nominations, and spent much of his life attacking a British medical establishment he regarded as complacent.

Major achievements

• Discovered secretin with William Bayliss in 1902 — the first hormone identified
• Coined the word 'hormone' in 1905 and founded endocrinology as a subject
• Described the balance of pressures governing fluid exchange at a capillary
• Established the law relating the heart's output to the stretch of its muscle
• Reformed the teaching of physiology and medicine in Britain

Life in brief

• 1866 — Born in London: Educated at Guy's Hospital.
• 1896 — Capillary fluid exchange: The balance of pressures that governs tissue fluid.
• 1899 — Professor at University College London: Where he spent the rest of his career.
• 1902 — Secretin: With Bayliss — the pancreas responds with every nerve cut.
• 1903 — The Brown Dog affair: A demonstration becomes a national controversy over vivisection.
• 1905 — Coins the word 'hormone': In his Croonian Lectures, from the Greek for 'I arouse'.
• 1918 — The law of the heart: The more the muscle is stretched, the harder it contracts.
• 1927 — Dies at sea: Near Kingston, Jamaica, still without the Nobel Prize.

Explore the life of Starling — five chapters

1. Guy's, and a Man Who Would Not Be Quiet — A physiologist with a low opinion of British medicine
2. Every Nerve Cut — 16 January 1902
3. One Word, and a Whole Discipline — Croonian Lectures, 1905
4. The Brown Dog — A statue, a riot, and a laboratory on trial
5. The Law of the Heart, and No Prize — War work, reform, and a death at sea

Read the five-chapter life of Ernest Starling →

Where Starling appears in your course

Ernest Starling has a genuine claim on 5 lessons of the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE science course built into Incandio:

• The Nervous System, and the Two Ways a Body Sends a Message — Biology: Half of statement 2.86 is the hormonal system, and it exists as a concept because of one experiment of Starling's. In 1902 he and William Bayliss cut every nerve running to a dog's pancreas and then introduced acid into its intestine; the pancreas secreted regardless, so the instruction must have travelled in the blood. In 1905 he named that class of messenger a hormone. Pavlov, whose nervous explanation had just been overturned, repeated the experiment himself and accepted the result — which is the other reason this is worth asking him about.
• The Hormones — Sources, Roles and Effects — Biology: Before 1902 it was assumed that one organ instructed another through nerves, and Pavlov had explained pancreatic secretion that way. Starling and Bayliss cut every nerve to the pancreas and then put acid into the intestine — and the pancreas secreted anyway. Something in the blood had carried the order. Three years later Starling proposed the word hormone for that class of messenger, from the Greek for 'I arouse'. Every entry in this lesson's table is an instance of the thing he demonstrated and named.
• The Human Reproductive Systems — Biology: This page claims that a chemical released by the testes changes a person's voice, and that a chemical released by the ovaries changes the shape of their hips — organs with no connection to the source at all. Starling is the reason that is a mechanism rather than a mystery. In 1902 he showed that an organ can command another with every nerve between them cut, because the message travels in the blood, and in 1905 he named that class of messenger a hormone. Puberty is one of the clearest cases of what he described: one gland, many target organs, and effects that last for years.
• The Menstrual Cycle — Biology: This cycle is four organs holding a conversation — pituitary to ovary, ovary to uterus, ovary back to pituitary — with no nerve involved anywhere in it. Starling is the reason that is a description rather than a metaphor. He proved in 1902 that an organ can command another with every nerve between them severed, because the instruction travels in the blood, and in 1905 he gave that class of messenger its name. The return path in this cycle, where the ovary's hormones act back on the gland that stimulated it, is exactly the kind of loop he opened up.
• The Placenta and the Amniotic Fluid — Biology: This page says substances cross the placental barrier and leaves it there; Starling worked out the physics of what governs that crossing at any capillary. He showed that fluid movement across a capillary wall is set by a balance between the blood pressure pushing outwards and the osmotic pull of the plasma proteins drawing back in — a principle that still carries his name and that applies at the placenta as much as anywhere else. He is also the reason the pressure difference between the two circulations matters as much as this page claims.

Begin

• Start a conversation with Starling — a dramatised, historically grounded AI portrayal
• Read the Historical Brief
• Explore the life of Starling — five chapters
• Find your course · Meet all 280 figures