'One of the principle British workers whose studies centred on electrophysiology was Augustus Désire Waller, born 1856, the son of Augustus Volney Waller. [note: 'Augustus Désire´ Waller, An Introduction to Human Physiology (London, 1891), 352, 365. All italics in original.'] The younger Waller spent most of his working life as full-time lecturer in physiology at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington and then as Professor in the University of London. Waller’s textbook, An Introduction to Human Physiology appeared in 1891 and was dedicated to his father. The dedication page listed a number of his father’s achievements, the first of which was ‘Degeneration and Regeneration of the Nerve, 1850’. Although the older Waller’s name had already been appended to degeneration, the son’s work seems to have been significant in further promoting the connection (see below). In his book the younger Waller described ‘The consequences of nerve-section’ including ‘paralysis of motion or of sensation or of both’. ‘Wallerian degeneration’, he observed, could be seen histologically. It was coarse and ‘easily recognized’. He also described ‘The reaction of degeneration’. This, he said, was ‘a term used to denote the reaction of diseased nerve and muscle [to electrical stimulation] on man’. In the nerve the reaction consisted in ‘an abolition of excitability to the constant current and to the induced current’ and inmuscle ‘the abolition of excitability to the induced currentwhile the excitability to the constant current is exaggerated’. Waller not only described degeneration in a single nerve under experimental conditions but also degeneration of the large ascending and descending tracts of the spinal cord, either in cases of lesions of the hemispheres or spinal accidents in man or after section of the cord in animals. [note: 'Augustus Désire´ Waller, An Introduction to Human Physiology (London, 1891), 352, 365. All italics in original.']' (464-465)