Ralph S. Lillie

Bayliss reports Lillie's 1911 claim that agents which excite a cell tend also to raise the permeability of its membrane¹. Lillie tested the converse on the Arenicola larva. Sodium chloride excited the larvae and released pigment, and ether, alcohol, chloroform and chloretone prevented both effects². Lillie concluded that these substances make the membrane more resistant to agents that raise permeability. Osterhout, writing in 1922, groups Lillie with Hober as authors who assume that stimulation is always tied to a permeability change⁴. Osterhout offers a different account of mechanical stimulation, based on rupture of semipermeable surfaces.

Child summarises Lillie's interpretation of excitation and transmission. He quotes a 1914 paper in which the permeability change is not a direct physical effect on the surface layer³. It follows a chemical reaction that temporarily removes the film's semipermeable and electromotor properties. In a highly irritable tissue such as nerve, Child's quotation says, a small and sufficiently rapid local drop in polarization could start this reaction. Lillie's 1923 book opens by calling the nature of vital organization the fundamental problem of biology⁷.

Loeb disputed Lillie's account of artificial development of eggs. Lillie held that hypertonic treatment restores permeability raised too far by butyric acid. Loeb said this did not fit his own findings, which showed the order of the two treatments to be immaterial⁵. Crile later named Lillie with Osterhout and Loeb as the best-known users of conductivity to study permeability⁶. His bibliography also lists a Lillie and Cattell paper on the conductivity of the external medium and the rate of cell division in sea urchin eggs⁸.