The text of a speech by Ballance as founding president of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons. Includes reminiscences of his work with renowned physiologists of the time, including Charles Sherrington: ‘one paper which, however, I must mention… was entitled " The formation of scar tissue," and I was very fortunate in being associated in a minor way with Sherrington in the experiments on which the conclusions of this paper were based. The paper was published Journal of Physiology in 1889… The next year (1890) a lantern demonstration of the experimental results was given in Berlin in the Pathological Section of the International Medical Congress, and in the discussion which followed a dramatic incident occurred - Ziegler threw over his previous belief in Cohnheim's views and accepted the conclusions of Sherrington and myself with regard to the conduct and fate of the leucocyte and connective tissue cell.’ (on 67)