Lot 10: PAVLOV, IVAN PETROVICH.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Lektsii o Rabote Glavnykh' Pishevaritel'nykh Zhelez' [Lectures on the activity of the digestive glands]. St Petersburg: [Kushnerev I Ko], 1897

first edition, 8vo (181 x 120mm.), one full-page illustration and graphs, contemporary black half morocco, pp.49-50 lightly creased, extremities lightly rubbed

Garrison & Morton 1022; Grolier, Science 83; PMM 385

first edition of pavlov's celebrated lectures on the physiology of digestion, the subject for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1904. His experiments led him to conclude that salivation and the flow of gastric juice following from the sight or smell of food were the result of a reflex process. He also worked on the complex processes by which the flow of gastric juices is triggered by stimuli other than food, for example the rattle of a plate for dogs, and called this a "conditioned" reflex. He concluded that almost any natural phenomenon could be developed into a conditioned reflex to produce a selected response. The extension of his experiments to children also led him to conclude that much human behaviour is in fact a series of conditioned reflexes.