William Bayliss Facts & Worksheets

Sir William Maddock Bayliss was born on May 2, 1860, in  Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, and passed away in London on August 27, 1924. He was a pioneering researcher in physiology, biochemistry, and physical chemistry. He was a British physiologist and co-discoverer of hormones, along with another British biologist named Ernest Starling.

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Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

• After Bayliss’s birth, his father, a prosperous decorative ironwork trader living in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, moved the family to a home he had built on West Heath Road in Hampstead, north London, which he named St Cuthberts. It was located on four acres of gardens. He had only Bayliss as an heir. 
• In 1880, William enrolled in University College London’s medical program but left after failing anatomy.
• His interest in physiology drew him to Wadham College in Oxford, where he studied under John Burdon Sanderson and earned a first-class degree examining electrical changes during salivary secretion. 
• In 1888, he returned to University College London to work as Edward Sharpey-Schafer’s assistant. He started working with Guy’s Hospital employee Ernest Starling in 1890 to study the heart’s electrical activity. 
• They supported one another in many ways, such as when Bayliss handled the recording equipment while Starling dealt with the preparation.

BAYLISS AND STARLING

• In 1893, Bayliss wed Gertrude, a sister of Starling; they had three sons and one daughter. They enjoyed receiving guests at their estate in London, including those members who came to the Physiological Society meetings.
• He constructed a laboratory in a corrugated iron hut in his four-acre backyard.
• Bayliss and Starling initially focused on capillary and vein pressures, but they drastically shifted course in 1897 to focus on regulating gastrointestinal motility. Collaboration became simpler when Starling accepted the Jodrell Chair of Physiology at University College London in 1899.
• The pancreas was known to secrete when hydrochloric acid was injected into the intestinal lumen but not when it was injected into the circulation. They attempted to identify the implicated nerves, but denervation failed to stop the response. 
• They suddenly had an idea, so they crushed some intestinal mucosa with sand containing hydrochloric acid. After filtering the extract, they injected it, producing abundant pancreatic production.
• They named such messenger chemicals hormones and termed the responsible chemical, secretin. As Bayliss stated, “..discovery must, it seems to me, ever rank as one of the landmarks of physiology—-the discovery not merely of a new thing, but of a new process of life.”
• In 1903, he used a dog under anaesthesia to demonstrate an experiment to medical students. 
• The anti-vivisection society’s secretary, Stephen Coleridge, was notified by two Swedish ladies in town that they felt the anesthetic was insufficient. His accusations of torture received widespread press coverage.
• When an apology was refused, the affluent Bayliss had the means to demand one and then file a libel lawsuit. The jury favored Bayliss during the Brown Dog affair trial, which dominated the press.
• Bayliss founded the Biochemical Society and later examined the brain’s blood flow and how enzymes work. He was given a professorship in general physiology at University College London in 1912.
• Starling served in the military during the early years of World War I, so Bayliss taught physiology and was a member of the Royal Society Food War Committee.
• Bayliss submitted a paper on wound shock in 1916. It is well known that even when a patient hasn’t bled, shock causes a reduction in blood volume. Because the heart needs to pump less blood due to this blood loss, blood pressure drops.
• This drop in blood pressure brings on the signs and symptoms of shock. Blood pressure only temporarily rises when blood volume is restored by injecting a salt solution. 
• Intravenous salt treatments had not assisted men stunned during the Battle of the Somme.

BAYLISS AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE

• Bayliss and Starling then investigated trypsin activation in pancreatic juice. When secreted, the liquid has no proteolytic activity, but it becomes active when it comes into touch with enterokinase in the intestinal fluid. Ivan Pavlov, experimental neurologist and physiologist, attributed this activation to an enzyme action in which the precursor, trypsinogen, was transformed into the active form, trypsin, by separating a portion of its molecule from it. Opponents saw the action as a combination of inactive enzyme and activator.
• Bayliss now focused on enzyme action in the context of physical chemistry. 
• He employed trypsin as the enzyme and caseinogen or gelatin as the substrate. He measured electrical conductivity, which was connected with other data such as viscosity, refractive index, optical rotation, osmotic pressure, and so on.
• Bayliss’ study of the osmotic pressure of Congo red, which demonstrated that this colloid exerted the same osmotic pressure as if it were in proper solution, led to the investigation of the electrical equilibrium formed when a semipermeable membrane separates Congo red and sodium chloride solutions. 
• This work supported Donnan’s research on the theory of membrane equilibria and its relationship to Walther Nernst’s equation for a concentration cell.
• Using cats, Bayliss proved that shock could be reduced and blood pressure could rise if the salt solution also contained 5% gelatin or gum Arabic. Starling had earlier explained that molecules were too large to escape from blood plasma as it travels through capillaries to create the osmotic pressure required to draw fluid from extracellular fluid back into circulation. 
• Men with post-wound shock were given gum-saline infusions in November 1917 and later recovered. However, gum-saline was delivered to the people positioned in the war in March 1918. 
• For Bayliss, the number of people who received treatment needed to be documented. Germans likewise adopted gum saline without writing their outcomes. Bayliss condensed this work into a book.
• He wrote Principles of General Physiology in 1919, defining the physiological functions shared by all living beings. This influential book, which went through four editions and was edited by his son Leonard Bayliss after his death, was “a revelation of the personality of the writer.” 

DEATH

• Bayliss passed away in 1924 in London.
• The Bayliss and Starling Society was established in 1979 as a meeting place for researchers interested in the role of central and autonomic peptides.
• According to one obituary, Bayliss’ quiet generosity, his kindliness, self-effacing modesty, and simple goodness endeared him to all his fellow physiologists. Another noted that Bayliss enjoyed spending time with young physiologists because his knowledge, though exhaustive, was never overbearing, and his genius was never frightening — probably because his mind did not work rapidly.

William Bayliss Worksheets

This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about William Bayliss across 26 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about William Bayliss. He was a pioneering researcher in physiology, biochemistry, and physical chemistry. He was a British physiologist and co-discoverer of hormones, along with another British biologist named Ernest Starling.

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

1. William Bayliss Facts
2. About Bayliss
3. Vocabulary
4. Fact or Bluff
5. Bayliss
6. Timeline
7. Contribution
8. What Makes Me Different?
9. My Story
10. Secretin
11. In a News

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was William Bayliss?

William Bayliss was a British physiologist born on May 2, 1860, in Wednesbury, England. He is best known for his contributions to the field of physiology and his discovery of the hormone secretin.

What is William Bayliss famous for?

William Bayliss is famous for discovering the hormone secretin in 1902. Secretin is produced by the small intestine and plays a crucial role in regulating the digestive system by stimulating the pancreas to release bicarbonate-rich pancreatic juice, aiding in the neutralization of stomach acid.

How did William Bayliss make the discovery of secretin?

William Bayliss and his wife, Ernest Starling, conducted experiments that involved surgically isolating a portion of a dog’s small intestine and monitoring the effects of its extracts on pancreatic secretion. They found that when the intestinal mucosa was exposed to acidic chyme (partially digested food from the stomach), it released a substance (secretin) into the bloodstream, which in turn stimulated the pancreas.

What impact did William Bayliss’s discovery have on the field of physiology?

Bayliss’s discovery of secretin had a profound impact on the understanding of hormonal regulation in the digestive system. It laid the foundation for the study of gastrointestinal hormones and the broader field of endocrinology. His work contributed significantly to our knowledge of how the body maintains homeostasis.

What other contributions did William Bayliss make to science?

In addition to his discovery of secretin, William Bayliss made significant contributions to various aspects of physiology, including research on the nervous system, muscle physiology, and the physiology of digestion. His work with Ernest Starling also led to the development of the concept of “hormone” to describe chemical messengers in the body, a term that is still widely used in modern physiology.

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