THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF NEUROPHYSIOLOGY I I 



FIG. 6. Albrecht von Haller, the greatest physiologist of the eighteenth century, and de La Mettric 

 whose treatise L'homme machine, addressed to Haller, caused a controversy that highlighted the ques- 

 tion as to whether the soul lay in the province of the physiologist. The portrait of Haller is from the 

 frontispiece of his Elementa Physiologiae and is an engraving by Tardieu; that of de La Mettrie is 

 from an engraving in the Bibliotheque Nationale (reproduced here with permission), the original 

 painting being a pastel by Maurice Quentin La Tour. 



enjoyed a fat living and long been a martyr to gout, 

 chancing to be carried into slavery by a Barbary 

 corsair, and kept for two years to hard labour and 

 spare diet in the gallics lost his gout and his obesity 

 together. ..." His master, Boerhaave, a martyr to 

 gout, had died 34 years before, corpulence hastening 

 his end. 



We have a contemporary description (52) of Boer- 

 haave's habits and also of his looks. "He had a large 

 head, short neck, florid complexion, light brown hair 

 (for he did not wear a wig), and open countenance, 

 and resembled Socrates in the flatness of his nose. ..." 

 We are told that he ro.se at four in the inorning, but 

 in the cold Dutch winters he allowed himself an e.xtra 

 hour in bed before settling to work in his unhealed 

 study. His chief relaxation was music and he played 

 several instruments of which his favorite was the lute. 



It is at about this period — the middle of the eight- 

 eenth century — that experimental work on the nerv- 

 ous system began to be channeled into three main 

 divisions: a) the elucidation of peripheral nerve 



52. Burton, William. An account of the Life and Writings of 

 Hermann Boerhaave. London: Lintot, 1743. 



physiology and its differentiation from that of muscle, 

 A) the recognition of the function of the spinal cord 

 together with the development of ideas about reflex 

 action, and c) the growth of knowledge about the 

 brain as a neural structure unencumbered by dogma 

 concerning the soul. 



EXCIT.iiiBILITY .AND TR.ANSMISSION IN NERVES 



In the field of physiology Boerhaave's most prom- 

 inent pupil was Albrecht von Haller. Haller, a Swiss, 

 was born in Berne and studied at Tubingen but was 

 drawn to Leiden by the magnet of Boerhaave's 

 teaching. After taking his medical degree he returned 

 to .Switzerland where he divided his time between 

 medicine, poetry and botany. In 1736 George II of 

 England, Elector of Hanover, appointed him to the 

 chair of the mixed sciences Anatomy, Surgery and 

 Botany at Gottingen, a newly-founded university. 

 It was here that Haller spent the experimental phase 

 of his life as a scientist. 



Unlike his master Boerhaave, Haller was a great 

 laboratory worker as well as a phenomenal scholar 



