A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



native city, Berne, as a practising physician. During 

 this time he did not neglect either poetry or botany, 

 publishing anonymously a collection of poems. 



In 1736 he was called to Gottingen as professor of 

 anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and botany. During 

 his labors in the university he never neglected his 

 literary work, sometimes living and sleeping for days 

 and nights together in his library, eating his meals 

 while delving in his books, and sleeping only when 

 actually compelled to do so by fatigue. During all 

 this time he was in correspondence with savants from 

 all over the world, and it is said of him that he never 

 left a letter of any kind unanswered. 



Haller's greatest contribution to medical science 

 was his famous doctrine of irritability, which has given 

 him the name of "father of modern nervous physiol- 

 ogy," just as Harvey is called "the father of the mod- 

 ern physiology of the blood." It has been said of this 

 famous doctrine of irritability that "it moved all the 

 minds of the century and not in the departments of 

 medicine alone in a way of which we of the present 

 day have no satisfactory conception, unless we com- 

 pare it with our modern Darwinism." 1 



The principle of general irritability had been laid 

 down by Francis Glisson (1597-1677) from deductive 

 studies, but Haller proved by experiments along the 

 line of inductive methods that this irritability was 

 not common to all " fibre as well as to the fluids of the 

 body," but something entirely special, and peculiar 

 only to muscular substance. He distinguished be- 

 tween irritability of muscles and sensibility of nerves. 

 In 1747 he gave as the three forces that produce mus- 



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