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University College (Physiological Laboratory)»
Professor Starling
Professor Starling was good enough to allow Mr. Higgins and
myself to spend several hours in his laboratory while he was carrying
out an experiment. I saw there a part of a unit respiration appa¬
ratus for use with animals and was able to give him some suggestions
with regard to it. At this time he told me that the results of an
investigation published by Knowlton and himself a short time ago
would have to be retracted as they found them incorrect.
I was particularly interested in watching an assistant read off
a stop watch and report the time of the flow of blood as 5.1, 5.3, and
5.6 seconds. I noticed that Professor Starling wrote these down.
On asking the assistant how he got these values, he said that he used
the stop watch and estimated to within one tenth of a second; if the
pointer stopped half way from the mark he called it 0.5 second, instead
of two-fifths or three-fifths. From the well known principle of stop
watches, this seemed to me a rather surprising way of reading it.