HALL, MARSHALL (1790-1857), English physiologist, was born on Feb. 18, 1790, at Basford, near Nottingham, the son of a cotton manufacturer. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and became resident house physician to the Royal Infirmary. This appointment he resigned after two years to visit the medical schools of Paris, Berlin and Gottingen. He then settled at Not tingham, where he became physician to the General Hospital, and in 1826 removed to London. Hall's principal works are : Diag nosis (1817) ; Mimoses (1818), on the affections designated as bilious, nervous, etc. ; Observations on Blood-letting (183o), and Experimental Essay on the Circulation of the Blood in the Capil lary Vessels (1831) in which he showed that the blood-channels intermediate between arteries and veins serve the office of bring ing the fluid blood into contact with the material tissues of the system. In I 832 he read before the Royal Society a paper "On the inverse ratio which subsists between respiration and irrita bility in the animal kingdom." His most important work in physiology was concerned with the theory of reflex action, em bodied in a paper "On the reflex function of the Medulla Ob longata and the Medulla Spinalis" (1832), supplemented in 1837 by another "On the true Spinal Marrow, and the Excito–motor System of Nerves." Hall thus became the authority on the multiform deranged states of health referable to an abnormal condition of the nervous system. His "ready method" for re suscitation in drowning and other forms of suspended respiration has saved innumerable lives. He died on Aug. 11, A list of his works and details of his "ready method," etc., are given in his Memoirs by his widow (1861).