Otto Loewi Quotes

Germany, Pharmacist
June 3, 1873 – December, 25, 1961.

Otto Loewi was a German-born pharmacologist and psychobiologist who discovered the role of acetylcholine as an endogenous neurotransmitter. For his discovery he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1936, which he shared with Sir Henry Dale, who was a lifelong friend who helped to inspire the neurotransmitter experiment. Loewi met Dale in 1902 when spending some months in Ernest Starling's laboratory at University College, London.

Also known as Neuroscientist, Pharmacologist, Professor

Natural or artificial stimulation of nerves gives rise to a process of progressive excitation in them, leading to a response in the effector organ of the nerves concerned.

Otto Loewi
- Process
- Rise
- Progressive
In nerve-free multicellular organisms, the relationships of the cells to each other can only be of a chemical nature. In multicellular organisms with nerve systems, the nerve cells only represent cells like any others, but they have extensions suited to the purpose which they serve, namely the nerves.

Otto Loewi
- Nature
- Free
- Purpose

In the year 1921, I was successful for the first time in obtaining certain proof that by stimulation of the nerves in a frog's heart, substances were released which to some extent passed into the heart fluid and, when transferred with this into a test heart, caused it to react in exactly the same way as the stimulation of the corresponding nerves.

Otto Loewi
- Time
- Heart
- Nerves
A drug is a substance which, if injected into a rabbit, produces a paper.

Otto Loewi
- Drug
- Paper
- Substance
Hitherto the conception of chemical transmission at nerve endings and neuronal synapses, originating in Loewi’s discovery, and with the extension that the work of my colleagues has been able to give to it, can claim one practical result, in the specific, though alas only short, alleviation of the condition of myasthenia gravis, by eserine and its synthetic analogues.

Otto Loewi