The embarrassing truth about "Lord Sherrington"

Shortly after the publication of the article we received the following e-mail from Kevan Martin:

Dear Idan,

i have just read your NN paper

congratualtions!

though i cant imagine how it got through the referees with such a

obvious flaws that invalidate the entire argument

for example:

Sir Charles was never a Lord and he did not coin 'synapse'

he suggested 'syndesm' for the 3rd ed of Fosters Textbook of

Physiology, and Foster consulted the Euripidean scholar, Verrall,

who was at Trinity Cambridge and it was he who suggested 'synapse',

which im sure you as Greek scholars know, yields a better adjectival form.

As you mention, the word that Sherrington used in 1897 was not

synapse but 'synapsis' the greek word, whose plural would be

'synapses', from which the Anglicized 'synapse'

is readily derived. Actually he only used it a few times in 1897

but by 1906, in the Silliman lectures (given in 1904) Sherrington (

he was knighted in 1922, as I sure you as an Englishman knows) was

using 'synapse'

which then became the established form.

I suppose you know it was the 50th anniversary of his death on 4 March?

cheers

kevan

Well, now he is, Isn’t he? J