( 57 ) 



possessed of abiding religious faith, he met his end, perhaps, as few 

 ever did. Rosselot, his physician, attended him to the last. Haller 

 felt his own pulse from time to time, and, addressing his friend and 

 physician with the utmost composure, said, " The artery no longer 

 beats." Thus passed away on December 12th, 1777, this " Prince of 

 Physiologists," the year which marks also the death of Linnams and 

 Jussieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. " Science and literature have rarely 

 lost such splendid ornaments in so short a period of time " (T. J. 

 Pettigrew). 



Perhaps, his greatest work is that on the doctrine of muscular 

 irritability. Glisson, as we have seen, introduced this term, using it 

 in a broad sense. He established the fundamental fact that the 

 " irritability " or excitability of a muscle, or vis insita or " inherent 

 force " as he calls it, is a property dependent on the muscle itself, and 

 not on the influence of the nervous system. We need not enter here 

 into his long discussion with Robert Whytt, of Edinburgh, who main- 

 tained the opposite proposition. All this dates from 1739 to 1743. 

 The power by which muscles are called into action through the nerves 

 he calls the vis nervosa, which, like the vis insita, survives somatic 

 death, for a muscle of a frog can be thrown into action when its 

 nerve is irritated. He distinguishes "sensibility" from "irritability," 

 and in his paper on "Sensibility," read 22nd April, 1752, in 

 Gottingen, he states how since 1751, " j'ai sousmis a plusieurs essais 

 190 animaux ; espece de cruaute pour laquelle je me sentais une 

 repugnance qui n'a pu etre vaincue que par l'envie de contribuer 

 a l'utilite" du genre humain." The second paper, on " Irritability," 

 was read 6th May, 1752. Any one wishing to read these famous 

 memoirs will find them reproduced by my friend Charles Richet, 

 Professor of Physiology in the Medical Faculty of Paris, in his Les 

 Maltres de la Science : Bibliotheque retrospective (1892). 



Besides his Elementa Haller's chief works are, Sur la formation 

 du Cceur dansle Poulel (Lausanne 1758) ; La Nature sensible et irritable 

 des parties du Corps animal (Lausanne 1760); Mouvements du Sang et 

 la Saignee (Lausanne 1757) ; Formation des Os (1758) ; La Generation 

 (1758) ; Collections de theses de Medecine, de Chirurgie, et oVAnalomie, 

 13 vols. 4to (1757-1778). 



WILLIAM CULLEN. 



1712-1790. 



BORN in 1712 at Hamilton in Lanarkshire, he studied at Glasgow 

 University in 1727, went to London in 1729, visited the West 

 Indies as a surgeon on a merchant ship ; he returned to Scotland 

 in 1731, attended the University of Edinburgh (1734-1736), was one 

 p 



