THE RISE OF PHYSIOLOGY 181 
edge of development was greatly promoted, first through his 
own efforts, and later through those of Malpighi. 
Harvey is to be recognized, then, as the father of modern 
physiology. Indeed, before his time physiology as such can 
hardly be spoken of as having come into existence. He intro- 
duced experimental work into physiology, and thus laid the 
foundation of modern investigation. It was the method of 
Harvey that made definite progress in this line possible, and 
accordingly we honor him as one of the greatest as well as 
the earliest of physiologists. 
Period of Haller.—From Harvey’s time we pass to the 
period of Haller (1708-1777), at the beginning of which 
physiology was still wrapped up with medicine and anatomy. 
The great work of Haller was to create an independent science 
of physiology. He made it a subject to be studied for its 
own sake, and not merely as an adjunct to medicine. Haller 
was a man of vast and varied learning, and to him was applied 
by unsympathetic critics the title of ‘‘ that abyss of learning.” 
His portrait, as shown in Fig. 54, gives the impression of 
a somewhat pompous and overbearing personality. He 
was egotistical, self-complacent, and possessed of great 
self-esteem. The assurance in the inerrancy of his own 
conclusions was a marked characteristic of Haller’s mind. 
While he was a good observer, his own work showing con- 
scientious care in observation, he was not a good interpreter, 
and we are to recollect that he vigorously opposed the idea 
of development set forth by Wolff, and we must also recog- 
nize that his researches formed the chief starting-point of an 
erroneous conception of vitality. 
As Verworn points out, Haller’s own experiments upon 
the phenomena of irritability were exact, but they were 
misinterpreted by his followers, and through the molding 
influence of others the attempted explanation of their mean- 
ing grew into the conception of a special vital force belong- 
