THE RISE OF PHYSIOLOGY l8l 



edge of development was greatly promoted, first through his 

 own efforts, and later through those of Malpighi. 



Harvey is to be recognized, then, as the father of modem 

 physiology. Indeed, before his time physiology as such can 

 hardly be spoken of as having come into existence. He intro- 

 duced experimental work into physiology, and thus laid the 

 foundation of modern investigation. It was the method of 

 Harvey that made definite progress in this line possible, and 

 accordingly we honor him as one of the greatest as well as 

 the earliest of physiologists. 



Period of Haller. — From Harvey's time we pass to the 

 period of Haller (i 708-1 777), at the beginning of which 

 physiology was still wrapped up with medicine and anatomy. 

 The great work of Haller was to create an independent science 

 of physiology. He made it a subject to be studied for its 

 own sake, and not merely as an adjunct to medicine. Haller 

 was a man of vast and varied learning, and to him was applied 

 by unsympathetic critics the title of " that abyss of learning." 

 His portrait, as shown in Fig. 54, gives the impression of 

 a somewhat pompous and overbearing personality. He 

 was egotistical, self-complacent, and possessed of great 

 self-esteem. The assurance in the inerrancy of his own 

 conclusions was a marked characteristic of Haller's mind. 

 While he w^as a good observer, his own work showing con- 

 scientious care in observation, he was not a good interpreter, 

 and we are to recollect that he vigorously opposed the idea 

 of development set forth by Wolff, and we must also recog- 

 nize that his researches formed the chief starting-point of an 

 erroneous conception of vitality. 



As Verworn points out, Haller's own experiments upon 

 the phenomena of irritability were exact, but they were 

 misinterpreted by his followers, and through the molding 

 influence of others the attempted explanation of their mean- 

 ing grew into the conception of a special vital force belong- 



