HALL, MARSHALL, an eminent physiologist and physician, was b. at Basford, Not tinghamshire, in 1790, and died at Brighton in 1857. At the age of 20 (having been previously apprenticed to a chemist) he entered on the study of medicine at the univer sity of Edinburgh, where, in 1812, he took his degree of M.D. After three years' subse quent attendance at the leading schools of medicine on the continent, he commenced practice in Nottingham in 1815, and rapidly obtained a high provincial reputation. In 1826 he removed to London, where his career as a physician was so successful, that he was enabled at the age of 60 to release himself from strictly professional labor. Among his contributions to physiology must be mentioned his Essay on the Circulation of the Blood, published in 1831, in which he made known his discovery of the remarkable "caudal heart" connected with the vessels in the tail of the eel; his paper "On the Inverse Ratio which subsists between the Respiration and Irritability in the Animal Kingdom," in the Philosophical Transactions for 1832; and the articles " Hybernation " and " Irritability " in Todd's Cyclopedia nf Anatomy and Physiology. But his name is best known in connection. With, the ddetritie Of .retlex function of the nervous system, which was his most engrossing subject of pursuit for the last twenty-five years of his life. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1833 appeared his "Memoir on the Reflex Function of the Medulla Oblongata and Medulla Spinalis." His views on the subject
of this memoir were extended and corrected in various publications, amongst which may be especially mentioned his Lectures on the Nervous S-,ystem and its Diseases (1836), Memoirs on the Yervous System (1837), Nett Memoir on the Nervous System (1843), and Synopsis of the Dkulaltic Nervous System (1850). There has been much discussion as to Hall's claims to be considered the discoverer of reflex action. He admitted that the phenomena of which he treated hdd been long known to physiologists, but lie believed himself to have been the first to show their independence of sensation, to bring them together under one generalization, to establish with precision the laws of their produc tion, to assign them their just rank in physiology, and to apply the doctrine to the elucidation of disease. His more strictly professional writings are many and valuable; they appear partly as independent publications, and partly in the medical journals. His last bequest to the science of medicine and the cause of humanity, was the descrip tion of a simple and easily applied method of restoring suspended respiration, which has been the means of saving many from untimely death, and is known as TUE l'IlATISITALL HALL METIIOD. It iS briefly described in the article AsrnxYIA. His memoirs, with a large collection of his letters, have been published by his widow.