HALLER, ALBERT VON. 



HALLER, ALBERT VON. 



263 



tutioual History of England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the 

 Death of George II.,' published in two volumes, 4to, in 1827 ; and 

 this was followed by his ' Introduction to the Literature of Europe 

 in the loth, 16th, and 17th Centuries,' published in four volumes, 8vo, 

 in 1837-39. A volume of 'Supplemental Notes' to his 'History of 

 the Middle Ages ' was published in 1848 ; embodying additional 

 information procured, or modi6cations of views into which the author 

 had been led since the publication of the main work. All the three 

 works have gone through numerous editions the 'History of the 

 Middle Ages ' being now (1856) in its eleventh or twelfth. They have 

 all been translated into French and German. A new and uniform 

 edition of Mr. Hallam's works is at present in course of publication ; 

 but to make it complete, the author's numerous scattered essays in 

 periodical works and elsewhere would have to be collected. Among 

 these minor writings one of the most interesting was a private memoir 

 of his son, Arthur H. Hallam, who died in 1833 in the prime of his 

 youth, after having won the most favourable opinions from all who 

 knew him. This, the elder son of the venerable historian (a younger 

 has since also died) is the A. H. H. of Tennyson's ' In Memoriam.' 

 Mr. Hallam is a Fellow of the Royal and of numerous other societies ; 

 he is a trustee of the British Museum : he was also one of the original 

 promoters of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. He 

 survives among us yet, full of years and crowned with honours. 



HALLER, ALBERT VON, was born at Berne, October 16th 1708, 

 of an ancient and respectable family. His father, Nicholas Emmanuel 

 von Haller, who was an advocate and had the reputation of being an 

 able lawyer, died in 1721 ; but even at that time he could foresee the 

 distinction which his son would attain, from the superiority which he 

 evinced over his fellow-pupils. In early life Haller was feeble and 

 delicate, being affected with rickets a circumstance which, as his 

 friend and biographer Zimmermann observes, not unfrequently tends 

 to foster and develop the talents of a youth. He is said, at the age 

 of nine, to have been in the habit of writing down each day all the 

 unusual words be met with. He composed also short lives of nearly 

 two thousand distinguished persons, after the manner of Bayle's 

 dictionary, and formed a Chaldee grammar. A satire in Latin verse 

 upon his master was known to have been written by him when only 

 ten years old, and two years later he first began to compose verses in 

 his native language. 



His father had intended him for the church, but his own inclinations 

 leading him to the study of physic, he went in 1723 to the University 

 of Tubingen, where he lived with Duvernoy, afterwards professor of 

 anatomy at St. Petersburg. Beiug but little satisfied with his progress 

 there, he resorted in 1725 to Ley den, where the zeal and talent of the 

 professors afforded him an opportunity of pursuing his studies in a 

 manner more accordant with his wishes. At this university Boerhaave 

 was then in the height of his fame, attended by 120 pupils, whose 

 instruction was his greatest delight ; and Albinus was delivering 

 lectures on anatomy and surgery. Having enjoyed such advantages 

 as these, it is nut extraordinary that Haller should ever after speak 

 with the greatest satisfaction of his residence at Leyilen. About this 

 time he visited Ruysch at Amsterdam, then in his eighty-ninth year, 

 and saw a portion of his celebrated collection of anatomical prepara- 

 tions, the superiority of which, he tells us, depended rather upon skill 

 in manipulation than on any secret process. At the end of the year 

 1726 he offered himself for his doctor's degree, and delivered hia thesis 

 ' De ductu f alivali Coschwiziano,' which he showed to be merely a 

 blood-vessel. In 1727 he visited London, where he became acquainted 

 with Sir Hans Sloane and Cheselden; thence he went to Oxford, 

 and thence to Paris, whence, having pursued his anatomical and 

 surgical studies for some time under \Yinslow and Le Dran, he went 

 to Basel to study mathematics under Bernoulli, and then returned to 

 his native country and began to practise as a physician. In 1735 he 

 was appointed physician to the hospital at Berne, and Boon after 

 principal librarian to the large public collection of books and medals; 

 but these office* he did not hold long, for in the following year he was 

 offered the professorship of medicine, anatomy, botany, and surgery, 

 at Gottingen, by George IL, which after some hesitation he accepted. 

 Having declined practising, he devoted himself to the duties of his 

 office with the greatest zeal, and especially exerted himself to increase 

 the facilities for the study of anatomy. During eighteen years that he 

 retained this appointment, while fully discharging all its laborious 

 duties, be was a constant contributor to the different scientific ' Trans- 

 actions.' In 1747 he published the first edition of his ' Prirntc Lineal 

 rhysiologico,' which he had that year used as the groundwork of his 

 lectures, having previously employed the ' Institutions' of Boerhaave. 

 In 1751 the Royal Society of Gottingen was established, and Haller, 

 at whose house the first meeting took place, was appointed perpetual 

 president. To their ' Transactions,' of which the first volume appeared 

 shortly after under the title of ' Commcntarii Societatis Regiaa 

 iScientiarum Gottingensis,' he was a constant contributor, even after 

 1753, when, in consequence of the delicate state of his health, being 

 obliged to leave Gottingen, he retired to Berne. Here he resided 

 during the rest of his life, constantly occupied in the publication of his 

 most important and voluminous works, in the cultivation of the science 

 of his profession aud of general literature, and in the active and 

 honourable discharge of various duties in the service of the republic, 

 iu which he at all times strenuously advocated tho caiue of the 



aristocracy. He died in October 1777, in the enjoyment of the highest 

 reputation both as a citizen, a scholar, and a philosopher, his literary 

 labours ceasing only with his life. 



It would be difficult to determine how large a portion of the facts 

 of. medical science now most familiarly known we owe to the extra- 

 ordinary labours of Haller. Some idea of the extent of his works may 

 be formed from the fact that the titles of nearly two hundred treatises 

 published by him from 1727 to 1777 are given by Senebier in his 

 ' Eloge' of Haller, and that this list does not profess to be complete. 

 He is unanimously received as the father of modern physiology, the 

 history of which, iu fact, commences with his writings. He was the 

 first to investigate independently the laws of the animal economy, 

 which had before been studied only in connection with the prevailing 

 mechanical and chemical or metaphysical theories of the day. Com- 

 mencing with a sound knowledge of anatomy, and of the structure of 

 the organs in the dead body, he sought experimentally aud systemati- 

 cally to discover the laws which governed their actions during life, 

 proceeding from the most simple to the most complex phenomena. 

 Excluding all the metaphysical explanations which Van Helmout and 

 Stahl had invented, and all those deduced from mechanics and 

 chemistry which were not clearly sufficient for the phenomena ascribed 

 to them, he. sought for powers peculiar to the living body, which he 

 believed must govern the actions which ho found occurring only iu it. 

 These he thought might be restricted to two sensibility and irrita- 

 bility; the former seated in the brain and nerves, the latter in muscular 

 fibre. In this he had indeed been partially anticipated by Glissou 

 [GLISSON], who perceived the necessity of admitting an inherent 

 property iu muscular fibre, by which its contractions take place under 

 the influence of certain stimuli ; but the laws of this property, aud the 

 distinction between it and elasticity, had never been at all clearly 

 determined. Haller thus illustrated these properties : the intestine 

 removed from the abdomen, or a muscle separated from the body, is 

 irritable, for when pricked or otherwise stimulated it contracts yet 

 it is not sensible ; the nerves on the other hand are sensible, but not 

 irritable, for when stimulated, though the muscles to which they are 

 distributed are thrown into action, they themselves do not exhibit tho 

 slightest motion. Hence irritability, he said, cannot be derived from 

 the nerves, for it is impossible they should communicate what they do 

 not possess themselves ; but he attributed a nervous power to some 

 of the muscles as a necessary condition of their irritability, and sup- 

 posed it to be conveyed to them during life from the brain through 

 the nerves, and to govern their actions under the influence of certain 

 undetermined laws. Proceeding to investigate further the laws of 

 irritability, he found that it differed in intensity aud permanency in 

 different parts of the body. He found that it continued longest in the 

 left ventricle of the heart, next in tho intestines and the diaphragm, 

 and that it ceased soonest of all in the voluntary muscles, and by 

 reference to this superior degree of irritability he explained the con- 

 stant action of the heart and diaphragm even during sleep. He denied 

 all irritability to the iris, and believed that the action of light upon it 

 takes place through the medium of the retina a view since proved to 

 be correct. He supposed the arteries to be supplied with muscular 

 fibres, but that the cellular tissue around them prevented any motion 

 from taking place in them ; aud he explained the accumulation of 

 blood in an inflamed part, partly by the contraction of the veins and 

 partly by the diminished contractility of the arteries. He endeavoured 

 to prove by experiments that the tendons, the capsules of joints, the 

 periosteum, and the dura mater, are entirely insensible, and that tho 

 l>ain which occurs in diseases of these parts ought to be referred to 

 the affection of the nerves distributed to aud around them ; and iu 

 these and some other tissues which he held to be destitute of irrita- 

 bility he admitted a force analogous to elasticity, by which they 

 contracted slowly and in a manner altogether different from muscular 

 tissue when divided or exposed to cold, &c. 



Such is a sketch of the great doctrine of irritability and sensibility 

 on which Haller based all the phenomena of life, aud around which ho 

 arranged all the facts of physiology known at his time in his ' Elemeuta 

 Physiologic.' It gave the first impulse to the study of the laws of life 

 as a separate and exclusive science; aud though in some parts erro- 

 neous, aud in many insufficient, it still contained enough of truth to 

 form a firm basis for the observations collected during many successive 

 years. His doctrines were strongly opposed by Whytt and others, and 

 in the controversies that followed numerous new facts were advanced 

 and the most important additions to physiological knowledge rapidly 

 made. It was soon shown that the restriction of the vital powers to 

 the two, as defined by Haller, was much too exclusive, for that there 

 were many parts which, though they gave no evidence of possessing 

 either of them, were not the less alive ; while others to which Haller 

 refused these properties gave sufficient demonstration of possessing 

 them when excited by other and appropriate stimuli. Hence first 

 originated the discovery of the fact that for the action of each organ 

 a peculiar stimulus is required, and that each tissue has what Bichat, 

 who illustrated it most completely, culled a ' vie propre.' 



But even if Haller had not attempted to establish any such great 

 generalisation of vital phenomena as this, his learning and his 

 admirable mode of studying physiology might have been suflicient to 

 obtain for him a reputation nearly as high as that which he has always 

 enjoyed. Possessed of a competent knowledge of all the Bcienixa 



