Ringer, Sidney

Ringer, Sidney (1835-1910) was a British physician and physiologist. His original salt solution was developed in 1882 and used to prolong the survival time of tissue taken from a frog s heart The solution used to test biomaterials differs in composition from that developed for amphibians. 

Clearly, the most studied aspect of stimulus-secretion coupling is the requirement for calcium. That Ca ions are essential for many cellular processes has been known since the days of Sidney Ringer [178], The eloquent studies of Douglas and his collaborators [179, 180] and others [181] firmly established the necessity for Ca in exocytotic secretion and set forth the notion that an increase in the level of free intracellular Ca, [Ca2+]j was responsible for initiating exocytosis. Evidence for increases in the level of intracellular free Ca as prerequisite for initiating exocytosis by cell surface stimulation is now available from studies using a variety of systems [181-183]. 

Studies of analogue antagonism were foreshadowed by the London work of Sidney Ringer (1883) who found, from a helper s error which he was quick to interpret, that the sodium (cations) in a solution of sodium chloride could not maintain the beat of an isolated heart unless balanced by calcium and potassium. As a result of this work, the physiologically balanced solutions, named after Ringer, Locke and Tyrode, were developed. 

Ringer s solution, which was invented by Sidney Ringer, resembles blood serum in its salt constituents. It contains of 8.6 g of NaCl, 0.3 g of KCl, and 0.33 g of CaClz in each liter of distilled water. It has been used topically to treat burns and wounds, and also used in combination with naturally occurring body substances, such as blood serum and tissue extracts. 

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