Talk:Vagusstoff

Merge?

Great article, Nrets, but I'm not sure if vagusstoff warrants having its own article, since it was later shown to be acetylcholine. I think it might be better to merge this with acetylcholine and Otto Loewi. Acetylcholine would benefit greatly from a "discovery" section, and the section in Loewi's article on his discovery of vagusstoff could be nicely fleshed out. What do you think? Sayeth 15:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I thought about that initially, but I think that there is a great deal more to the discovery of acetylcholine than Loewi's experiments. Also, I think that it doesn't quite fit in with the flow of the ACh article since there is a lot of extraneous material in vagusstoff that is not directly relevant to ACh. A better merge would be with Otto Loewi, but somehow I liked the idea of having a separate article illustrating a short-lived yet pivotal concept in the history of neuroscience. Might be the only encyclopedia article about Vagusstoff, which is certainly a plus. Also, other defunct scientific terms have their own articles, such as Phlogiston. So while I see your logic for merging, I think there is enough in this article to merit standing on its own. If you still feel strongly about this we can see what other people think. Nrets 16:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)