50 Years Ago

It is particularly rewarding to investigate the experience of chronosystole, or time contraction during sympathetic excitation, as this state, which is connected with an increase in metabolic rate, can be elicited at will through psychotomimetic, pyretogenic drugs such as mescaline, marihuana, D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), 'Psilocybin' ... No effort has been made ... to quantitatively differentiate the degrees of reactivity in subjects who have ingested the same dose of 'Psilocybin' ... We have refined the use of two already existing variables for the measurement of time contraction — handwriting samples and finger-tapping rates.

From Nature 22 January 1966

100 Years Ago

To discover whether the various objects carried about on the spines of the purple-tipped sea-urchin (Echinus miliaris) were accidentally picked up or deliberately placed there has recently formed the subject of a series of experiments by Mr. H. N. Milligan. He gives the results of his inquiry in the Zoologist for December. While usually stones, sea-weed, or shells are carried, tube-worms, hydroids, periwinkles, or tunicates, as chance may determine, are also used, apparently for the purposes of disguise and protection from enemies. That such objects are borne with a purpose, and not as a result of accident, is shown by the fact that when all foreign bodies are removed from the spines of urchins living in an aquarium, they will invariably be speedily replaced as soon as their loss is perceived, the tube-feet being used to perform this office. Young individuals were more assiduous in this regard than adults, but in all cases particular care was taken to conceal the anus, which is apparently a very vulnerable spot.

From Nature 20 January 1916 Footnote 1