20 



HANDBOOK OF PPn'SIOI.OGV 



NEUROPHYSIOLOGY I 



FIG. 15. Johannes Miiller and his famous pupil von Hehn- 

 holtz. The deHcate chalk drawing of Miiller was at one time 

 in the Surgeon General's Library (now the National Library 

 of Medicine). The picture of von Helmholtz shows him as a 

 young man in the period when he made his major contribu- 

 tions to the physiology of peripheral nerve. 



preparation the electricity lay and had thought that 

 muscle alone could produce it. The preparation 

 used by Matteucci was a frog's leg complete be- 

 low the knee with only the isolated nerve abo\e 

 it. Galvani's frogs retained a piece of the vertebral 

 column with the insertion of the nerve into its 

 portion of the spinal cord. Matteucci's contribu- 

 tions in brief were a) the galvanometric detection of 

 a current flow between the cut surface of a muscle 

 and its undamaged surface, demonstrated in Ijoth 

 animal and man (89, 90); h) the multiplication of 

 current by serial arrangement of cut muscles so that 

 the transverse section of each touched the longitudinal 

 section of the next; c) the decrease in this current dur- 

 ing tetanus caused by strychnine (90) (the germ of the 



89. Matteucci, C. Sur le courant electrique de la grenouille. 

 Ann. chim. et phys. 68: 93, 1838. 



90. M.\TTEUcci, C. Deu.Kieme memoire sur le courant elec- 

 trique propre de la grenouille et des animau.x a sang 

 chaud. Ann. chim et phys. 80: 301, 1842. 



" ". . . while each organ of sense is provided with a capacity 

 of receiving certain changes to be played upon it, as it were, 

 yet each is utterly incapable of receiving the impression 

 destined for another organ of sensation." Quoted from Bell, 

 Charles (1774-1842). Idea of a new anatomy of the brain, submitted 

 for the observation of his friends. Privately printed, 1811. 



""It is more probable that every nerve so affected as to 

 communicate sensation, in whatever psirt of the nerve the 

 impression is made, always gives the same sensation as if 

 affected at the common seat of the sensation of that particular 

 nerve. ..." Quoted in The Works of John Hunter edited by J. F. 

 Palmer. London; Longmans, 1835. 4 vol. 



discovery of the action current); and d) the aljility 

 of a frog's mu.scle contraction to generate enough 

 electricity to stimulate the nerve of another nerve- 

 muscle preparation when laid across it (the rheo- 

 scopic frog) (91, 92). Matteucci was inconsistent in 

 his interpretation of this finding and showed his 

 characteristic vacillation between an explanation in 

 terms of electricity and one based on nervous force. 

 He named the effect the 'secondary contraction.' 

 Matteucci (93) also noted such important laijoratory 

 phenomena as the difference in stimulating effect of 

 make' and 'break' shock.s, and the polarizing effects 

 of prolonged flow of current on electrodes. He noted 

 that polarization could occur inside the muscle and 

 thus laid the ground for all the work that was to 

 follow on polarization and electrotonus. 



du Bois-Reymond, of French name and Swiss 

 descent, lived all of his working life in Berlin. He was 

 a pupil of the greatest physiologist of the time, 

 Johannes Miiller. Miiller, professor first at Bonn and 

 then at Berlin, was a gifted teacher who could count 

 among his pupils von Helmholtz, von Briicke and 

 Sechenov. His Handbuch der Physiologie (94) was the 

 great textbook of the nineteenth century, and the 

 journal he founded, Mtiller's Archives fiir Analomie und 

 Physiologie, as a successor to Reil's first physiological 

 journal, was the main outlet for the stream of research 

 that was coming from the German schools at that time. 

 His own interests lay mostly in sensory physiology 

 where his name is always associated with the "Law of 

 .Specific Nerve Energies,' although this concept in 

 fragmentary form had certainly occurred to others 

 before him, including notably Charles Bell''- and John 

 Hunter.'-' By this law Miiller formulated the findings 

 that wherever along its course a sensory ner\e was 

 stimulated, the resultant sensation was that appropri- 

 ate to the sense organ it served. On the issue of elec- 

 tricity in nerve, Miiller took the position that it was 

 indeed an artificial excitant but had no part in natural 

 excitation. He reached this conclusion largely from an 

 experiment in which he mashed the nerve and demon- 



9 1 . Matteucci, C. Sur une phenomene physiologique produite 

 par les muscles en contraction. Compt. rend. Acad, sc, 

 Paris 4: 797, 1842. 



92. Matteucci, C. and F. H. A. Humboldt. Sur le courant 

 electrique des muscles des animaux vivants ou recemment 

 tues. Compt. rend. Acad, sc, Paris 16: 197, 1843. 



93. M.\TTEUCCi, C. Compt. rend. Acad, sc, Paris 52: 231, 1861 ; 

 53: 503, 1861; 56: 760, 1863; 65: 131, 1867. 



94. MiJLLER, Johannes (1801-1858). Handbuch der Physiologic 

 des Menschen. Coblentz: Holscher, vol. I, 1833; vol. II, 

 1840; English translation by William Baly. vol. I, 1838; 

 vol. II, [842. 



