A. I. Wedensky — R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik claims that, before his deportation to Simferopol in 1902, he studied “psychology and the history of philosophy with Professor A. I. Vedensky” (After Twenty Years (I), George Jonkauskas trans. of Tiurmy i ssylki [Prisons and Deportations], Russian Review, vol. 10, no. 2, April 1951, p. 146). According to Anja Vöckel, “Nikolai Evgenievich Vedenski (1852–1922) wurde Privatdozent dann außerordentlicher und ordentlicher Professor für Physiologie in St. Petersburg” (A. Vöckel, Die Anfänge der physiologischen Chemie:
Ernst Felix Immanuel Hoppe-Seyler (1825–1895), Doctoral Dissertation, Technischen Universität Berlin, 2003, p. 237). Almost a century before Ms. Vöckel defended her thesis, N. E. Wedensky — “Professor der Physiologie an der Universität der St. Petersburg” — published Die Erregung, Hemmung und Narkose (Bonn: Martin Hager, 1904, 152 pages), of which mention was made in the Appalachian Journal of Psychology (July 1904, vol. 15, no. 3, p. 453):
For a score of years this vigorous thinker has devoted himself largely to the problem which Setchinoff first made prominent, namely inhibition, and here he sums up in a concise way his own conclusions having brought it into formal relation with excitation and narcosis. He has reached the conclusion that narcotic states can be caused by ordinary means of excitation and that these are in turn akin to inhibition. This interesting work needs fuller notice which we hope to be able to give later.
The same journal’s January 1905 issue gave a more in-depth review (by T. L. Smith, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 141–142):
The present volume, of which a brief notice has already been given in a previous number, states in a concise form the results of a series of experimental researches on the effect of narcotics and various chemical, thermal and electrical stimuli upon a given nerve tract. The chief result of Prof. Wedensky’s first research was to confirm the conclusions of Grünhagen and his followers that, in proportion as the poison exerts its influence upon the nerve, the irritability of the nerve decreases since increasingly stronger stimuli are necessary to produce the minimal muscular contraction. The conductivity on the other hand appears to persist for a longer time, since even minimal electrical stimulations applied to a normal point in the nerve above the narcotized tract are still transmitted through it. An ingenious device by which a telephone was introduced between the narcotized tract and the muscle made possible a series of experiments in which changes in the nerve were indicated by a change of tone in the instrument. With the aid of this apparatus a stage, to which the name Versuchstadium was applied, was discovered in which both weak and strong stimuli were still conducted from the normal point through the narcotized tract although the clear, musical tone of the telephone had already become dull and confused. From this series of experiments Prof. Wedensky draws two important inferences: (1) that while by the usual method of minimal stimuli the conductivity of the nerve has been regarded as unchanged until the sudden disappearance, it is, in reality, deeply changed before this happens. (2) The narcotized nerve tract, at least in the Versuchstadium must be regarded as in a state of irritability. In the stage succeeding this, as the narcosis deepens, which he terms the paradoxical stage, it was found that while strong stimuli produced only a mere beginning of muscular contraction, weak stimuli produced tetanic contraction and that conductivity persists longest for weak stimuli. It was also found that in the paradoxical stage a stimulus applied to the normal nerve tract above the narcotized tract exerted an inhibiting influence upon the latter, e.g., if stimulation of the narcotized tract still produces some response in the muscle, this vanishes or is greatly decreased if a point in the normal nerve tract above is stimulated at the same time. A long series of experiments with induction currents of varying strength was carried out for the purpose of investigating this inhibitory influence of connected nerve tracts and likewise on the effects of different chemicals and thermal agents applied to the nerve, from which he concludes that states of the nerve completely analogous to narcosis can be produced by ordinary means of excitation—and that irritability, inhibition, and narcosis are so closely related that the same stimuli under different conditions may produce either of these states. As a term to cover all states of the nerve in which irritability is more or less deadened, whether by narcotics or other means, he coins the word Parabiose, which state he concludes is most closely related if not identical with inhibition. This work of Prof. Wedensky’s is the most complete and extensive contribution which has yet been made on the subject of inhibition, and his conclusions are far reaching and important for psychology, inasmuch as the problem of inhibition is closely bound up with those theories of will and attention that have a physiological basis.
The stage which Wedensky described as paradoxical has in the subsequent literature been termed Wedensky’s paradox. Previously, on the afternoon of Thursday, August 6, 1896, Professor Wedensky read a paper on “The Study of Central Innervation” at the Third International Congress of Psychology in Munich (E. B. T., Notes and News, Appalachian Journal of Psychology, October 1896, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 144). A more detailed account of this paper, read in the Congress’s Section I — Anatomy and physiology of the brain and the sense organs. Psychology of the senses. Psycho-physics. — appeared in Science :
Prof. W. Wendensky [sic] (St. Petersburg) reported some experiments to determine what influence the stimulation of a cortical center on one hemisphere of the brain had on the corresponding center of the opposite side. The results were very variable, but led to the conclusion that there was a functional relation between the hemispheres much closer than has been usually admitted. (S. I. Franz, The International Psychological Congress, Science, n. s., vol 4., no. 96, October 30, 1896, p. 644.)
Earlier, on the morning of Thursday, September 12, 1895, at the Berne Physiological Congress,
Prof. N. Wedensky (St. Petersburg) demonstrated the effects of simultaneous stimulation in different rhythms of two points of a nerve, the action currents of which were led through a telephone. Variations of the tone heard were produced by interference between the two stimulations. (Science, n. s., vol. 2, no. 52, December 27, 1895, p. 881.)
The next day, Friday, September 13, again in the morning,
Prof. N. Wedensky (St. Petersburg) showed the following experiments: Stimulation of the frog’s sciatic nerve with very strong and rapidly repeated shocks soon produced relaxation of its muscle, which, however, became again tetanically contracted when the strength of stimulation was reduced. Reduction of the frequency produced the same result. There is, accordingly, for every strength of stimulation an optimum frequency, and vice versa. When the muscle during strong stimulation of its nerve has become relaxed, direct stimulation of it with moderately strong shocks produces contraction only when the stimulation of the nerve is interrupted. This is to be interpreted as due to the motor nerve endings under pessimum stimulation acting inhibitorily on the muscle, fatigue being excluded. (Science, n. s., vol. 2, no. 52, December 27, 1895, pp. 882–883.)
