The Tenth International Symposium on Cholinergic Mechanisms, Arcachon, France September 1–5, 1998

The Tenth International Symposium on Cholinergic Mechanisms (ISCM), organized by Jean Massoulie (École Normale Supérieure, Paris), took place in Arcachon, a small “station balnéaire,” located a few miles from Bordeaux. Station Biologique of Arcachon was the site where, in the summers and falls of 1938 and 1939, the team of Albert Fessard, William Feldberg, and David Nachmansohn established that the transmission at the electromotor synapse of the electric eel, Torpedo marmorata, is cholinergic and results in the electric discharge of the eel. Subsequently, Nachmansohn (with Machado) discovered the enzyme primarily responsible for acetylcholine (ACh) synthesis that he called choline acetylase (choline acetyltransferase, ChAT, in modern nomenclature). These discoveries, as well as the work of other 19th and 20th century “cholinergikers,” including Otto Loewi, Henry Dale, Rene Couteaux, John Eccles, Victor Whittaker, and George Koelle, established the presence of cholinergic transmission at ganglionic, parasympathetic, neuromyal, and central sites. In view of these contributions of Nachmansohn (1899 to 1983), and as George Koelle and John Eccles passed away in 1997, it was fitting that, at the Tenth ISCM, Jean-Pierre Changeux (Pasteur Institute, Paris) presented the David Nachmansohn Lecture (4), Uel (Jack) McMahan (Stanford Univ. School of Medicine, Stanford, CA) delivered the George B. Koelle Lecture, Alexander Karczmar (Hines VA Hospital, Hines, IL) emphasized some of the aspects of John Eccles’ work (14, 17), Rene Couteau (Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris) recalled his and Nachmansohn’s work at the neuromyal junction, and Victor Whittaker (Cambridge Univ., U.K.) described the early studies of the Torpedo at the Station Biologique of Arcachon.