198 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



24. 



Psycho- 

 physics. 



the circle of the exact or mechanical sciences. But not 

 only in its far-reaching applications to medical know- 

 ledge and practice has the movement which centred in 

 Weber and Miiller shown its strength and importance ; it 

 has also, from the commencement, extended its influence 

 in another direction. To it belongs pre-eminently the 

 cultivation of that borderland which connects the natural 

 and the mental sciences. Miiller 1 himself began his 

 career by a study of the mechanism of the perceptions 

 of the senses. He affirmed the law of specific energies, 



interesting to note that Prof. Bill- 

 roth does not employ the word 

 biological, but uses the untranslat- 

 able compound iwturtrissenschaft- 

 lich-medicinisch. 



1 Johannes Muller (1801-58) has 

 been termed the Haller of the 

 nineteenth century, the Cuvier of 

 Germany. A very good account 

 of his work, which forms an im- 

 portant chapter in the history of 

 German biology, is contained in Du 

 Bois-Reymond's ' Gedachtnissrede 

 auf Joh. Miiller' (1858), reprinted 

 with extensive notes in his ' Reden,' 

 vol. ii. pp. 143-334. Muller is there 

 considered as the last representa- 

 tive of a dynasty of philosophers 

 who embraced the whole domain of 

 "biology," which since has become 

 divided into various sciences, not- 

 ably the morphological and the 

 physiological branches. He thus 

 stands out as the master of some 

 of the greatest modern represent- 

 atives of natural and medical sci- 

 ence, such as Schwann and Henle 

 in anatomy, Briicke, Du Bois-Rey- 

 mond, and Helmholtz in physiology, 

 Virchow in pathological anatomy. 

 He together with Lucas Schonlein 

 (1793-1864) may be considered as 

 the founder of the modern Berlin 

 school of medicine, contemporane- 

 ous with wjiich is the modern 



Austrian school, with the names of 

 Purkinje, Skoda, Oppolzer, and 

 Rokitansky. An excellent charac- 

 terisation of the different positions 

 and influences, of the cross-currents 

 of thought, of the original homes 

 and of the wanderings of the scien- 

 tific spirit through the many Ger- 

 man - speaking countries and the 

 extensive network of German uni- 

 versities, will be found in Billroth, 

 loc. cit. , pp. 307-366. If we imagine 

 a similar life as existing all through 

 the century in other domains of 

 thought in philosophy, theology, 

 philology, mathematics, chemistry, 

 law, and the science of history we 

 get a faint idea of the work of the 

 German universities. In Lexis, 

 'Die deutschen Universitaten,' an 

 attempt has been made to give 

 such a picture. The picture, how- 

 ever, suffers by the exclusion of the 

 Austrian universities, and these 

 notably in the medical world hold 

 such a very high position that the 

 record of the united work is some- 

 what incomplete. The sciences are 

 also in this record cut up into 

 many branches, whereas in the 

 earlier part of the century many of 

 these were united and represented 

 by one great name. Such a name 

 was Johannes Muller in biology. 



