Albrecht von Haller

Infobox Scientist
name = Albrecht von Haller
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caption = Albrecht von Haller
birth_date = October 16, 1708
birth_place = Berne
death_date = December 12, 1777
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nationality = Swiss
ethnicity =
field = anatomist physiologist naturalist
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Albrecht von Haller (October 16, 1708–December 12, 1777) was a Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist and poet.

Early life

He was born of an old Swiss family at Berne. Prevented by long-continued ill-health from taking part in boyish sports, he had the more opportunity for the development of his precocious mind. At the age of four, it is said, he used to read and expound the Bible to his father’s servants; before he was ten he had sketched a Chaldee grammar, prepared a Greek and a Hebrew vocabulary, compiled a collection of two thousand biographies of famous men and women on the model of the great works of Bayle and Moréri, and written in Latin verse a satire on his tutor, who had warned him against a too great excursiveness. When still hardly fifteen he was already the author of numerous metrical translations from Ovid, Horace and Virgil, as well as of original lyrics, dramas, and an epic of four thousand lines on the origin of the Swiss confederations, writings which he is said on one occasion to have rescued from a fire at the risk of his life, only, however, to burn them a little later (1729) with his own hand.

Medicine

Haller's attention had been directed to the profession of medicine while he was residing in the house of a physician at Biel after his father's death in 1721. While still a sickly and excessively shy youth, he went in his sixteenth year to the university of Tübingen (December 1723), where he studied under Elias Rudolph Camerarius Jr. and Johann Duvernoy. Dissatisfied with his progress, he in 1725 exchanged Tübingen for Leiden, where Boerhaave was in the zenith of his fame, and where Albinus had already begun to lecture in anatomy. At that university he graduated in May 1727, undertaking successfully in his thesis to prove that the so-called salivary duct, claimed as a recent discovery by Georg Daniel Coschwitz (1679-1729), was nothing more than a blood-vessel.

Haller then visited London, making the acquaintance of Sir Hans Sloane, William Cheselden, John Pringle, James Douglas and other scientific men; next, after a short stay in Oxford, he visited Paris, where he studied under Henri François Le Dran and Jacob Winslow; and in 1728 he proceeded to Basel, where he devoted himself to the study of higher mathematics under John Bernoulli. It was during his stay there also that his interest in botany was awakened; and, in the course of a tour (July/August, 1728), through Savoy, Baden and several of the cantons of Switzerland, he began a collection of plants which was afterwards the basis of his great work on the flora of Switzerland. From a literary point of view the main result of this, the first of his many journeys through the Alps, was his poem entitled "Die Alpen", which was finished in March 1729, and appeared in the first edition (1732) of his "Gedichte". This poem of 490 hexameters is historically important as one of the earliest signs of the awakening appreciation of the mountains, though it is chiefly designed to contrast the simple and idyllic life of the inhabitants of the Alps with the corrupt and decadent existence of the dwellers in the plains.

In 1729 he returned to Berne and began to practise as a physician; his best energies, however, were devoted to the botanical and anatomical researches which rapidly gave him a European reputation, and procured for him from George II in 1736 a call to the chair of medicine, anatomy, botany and surgery in the newly founded University of Göttingen. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, and was ennobled in 1749.

The quantity of work achieved by Haller in the seventeen years during which he occupied his Göttingen professorship was immense. Apart from the ordinary work of his classes, which entailed the task of newly organizing a botanical garden, an anatomical theatre and museum, an obstetrical school, and similar institutions, he carried on without interruption those original investigations in botany and physiology, the results of which are preserved in the numerous works associated with his name; he continued also to persevere in his youthful habit of poetical composition, while at the same time he conducted a monthly journal (the "Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen"), to which he is said to have contributed twelve thousand articles relating to almost every branch of human knowledge. He also warmly interested himself in most of the religious questions, both ephemeral and permanent, of his day; and the erection of the Reformed church in Göttingen was mainly due to his unwearied energy.

Notwithstanding all this variety of absorbing interests he never felt at home in Göttingen; his untravelled heart kept ever turning towards his native Berne (where he had been elected a member of the great council in 1745), and in 1753 he resolved to resign his chair and return to Switzerland.

Later life

The twenty-one years of his life which followed were largely occupied in the discharge of his duties in the minor political post of a "Rathausmann" which he had obtained by lot, and in the preparation of his "Bibliotheca medica", the botanical, surgical and anatomical parts of which he lived to complete; but he also found time to write the three philosophical romances "Usong" (1771), "Alfred" (1773) and "Fabius and Cato" (1774),in which his views as to the respective merits of despotism, of limited monarchy and of aristocratic republican government are fully set forth.

About 1773 the state of his health meant he withdrew from public business. He supported his failing strength by means of opium, on the use of which he communicated a paper to the "Proceedings" of the Göttingen Royal Society in 1776; the excessive use of the drug is believed, however, to have hastened his death.

Haller, who had been three times married, left eight children, the eldest of whom, Gottlieb Emanuel, attained to some distinction as a botanist and as a writer on Swiss historical bibliography (1785-1788, 7 vols).

See also:
* History of anatomy in the 17th and 18th centuries

Importance for Homoeopathy

Albrecht von Haller is quoted in the footnote to paragraph 108 in the Organon of Medicine, the principal philosophical work by the founder of Homoeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. In this paragraph, Hahnemann describes how the curative powers of individual medicines can only be ascertained through accurate observation of their specific effects on healthy persons:

"Not one single physician, as far as I know, during the previous two thousand five hundred years, thought of this so natural, so absolutely necessary and only genuine mode of testing medicines for their pure and peculiar effects in deranging the health of man, in order to learn what morbid state each medicine is capable of curing, except the great and immortal Albrecht von Haller. He alone, besides myself, saw the necessity of this (vide the Preface to the Pharmacopoeia Helvet., Basil, 1771, fol., p.12); Nempe primum in corpore sano medela tentanda est, sine peregrina ulla miscela; odoreque et sapore ejus exploratis, exigua illiu dosis ingerenda et ad ommes, quae inde contingunt, affectiones, quis pulsus, qui calor, quae respiratia, quaenam excretiones, attendum. Inde ad ductum phaenomenorum, in sano obviorum, transeas ad experimenta in corpore aegroro," etc. But no one, not a single physician, attended to or followed up this invaluable hint."

The quotation from von Haller may be translated from the Latin as follows: "Of course, firstly the remedy must be proved on a healthy body, without being mixed with anything foreign; and when its odour and flavour have been ascertained, a tiny dose of it should be given and attention paid to all the changes of state that take place, what the pulse is, what heat there is, what sort of breathing and what exertions there are. Then in relation to the form of the phenomena in a healthy person from those exposed to it, you should move on to trials on a sick body..."

External links

* [http://www.haller.unibe.ch The Haller research group]
* [http://www.haller300.ch/whowashaller.html Biography and information on celebrations in 2008]
* [http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/people/data?id=per85 Biography and bibliography] in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
* [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHNPDF/WorkingPaper12CG.pdf Haller and China]
* [http://www.germanistik.unibe.ch/gelzer/Haller/haller_staatsromane.htm Haller’s novels online]
* [http://www.archive.org/details/elementaphysiolo04hall Internet Archive] Digitised "Elementa physiologiae corporis humani" (1762)

References

*1911

*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=Sakuta
first=Manabu
authorlink=
year=2008|month=Jan.
title= [One hundred books which built up neurology (13)--Albrecht von Haller "Elementa physiologiae corporis humani" (1757-1766)]
journal=Brain and nerve = Shinkei kenkyū no shinpo
volume=60
issue=1
pages=104–5
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title=Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)
journal=J. Neurol.
volume=253
issue=2
pages=265–6
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pmid = 16485077
doi = 10.1007/s00415-006-0998-x
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title= [Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)]
journal=Orvosi hetilap
volume=137
issue=24
pages=1319–21
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pmid = 8757091
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last=Fye
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title=Albrecht von Haller
journal=Clinical cardiology
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last=Staffelbach
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year=1995|month=.
title= [Illness as metaphor. New thoughts on an old dispute: Julien Offray de la Mettrie and Albrecht von Haller]
journal=Clio medica (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
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title= [Albrecht von Haller and the medical practitioner of his era]
journal=Gesnerus
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pages=253–64
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pmid = 3912268
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*cite journal
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last=Breuning
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year=1978|month=.
title= [Alexander von Humboldt's opinion of Albrecht von Haller]
journal=Gesnerus
volume=35
issue=1-2
pages=132–9
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pmid = 352815
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*cite journal
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last=Merkulov
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year=1978|month=Jan.
title= [On the 200th anniversary of the death of Albrecht von Haller (1708--1777)]
journal=Fiziologicheskiĭ zhurnal SSSR imeni I. M. Sechenova
volume=64
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pages=124–5
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pmid = 340292
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*cite journal
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last=Lindskog
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year=1978|month=Jan.
title=Albrecht von Haller. A Bicentennial Memoir
journal=Connecticut medicine
volume=42
issue=1
pages=49–57
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pmid = 340128
bibcode = | oclc =| id = | url = | language = | format = | accessdate = | laysummary = | laysource = | laydate = | quote =
*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=Portmann
first=M L
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year=1977|month=.
title= [Variolation as reflected in the correspondence between Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) and Achilles Mieg (1731-1799)]
journal=Gesnerus
volume=34
issue=3-4
pages=294–303
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pmid = 340348
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title= [Albrecht von Haller as physician. History of the elixir acidum Halleri]
journal=Gesnerus
volume=34
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pages=267–93
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pmid = 340347
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last=Yamagishi
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year=1976|month=Jul.
title= [Albrecht von Haller and the development of electrophysiology]
journal= [Kango gijutsu : [Nursing technique]
volume=22
issue=10
pages=35–9
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pmid = 781355
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*cite journal
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title= [Albrecht von Haller and Padua. The effect of his medical thoughts at the end of the 18th century]
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pmid = 773779
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*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=Mazzolini
first=R G
authorlink=
year=1976|month=Jan.
title=Two letters on epigenesis from John Turberville Needham to Albrecht von Haller
journal=Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences
volume=31
issue=1
pages=68–77
publisher = | location = | issn =
pmid = 770567
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*cite journal
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title=The motivations of the scientist: the self-image of Albrecht von Haller
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pmid = 4611961
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*cite journal
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last=Belloni
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title=Embryological drawings concerning his Theorie von der Generation sent by Caspar Friedrich Wolff to Albrecht von Haller in 1764
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pages=205–8
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*cite journal
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last=Jarcho
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title=Albrecht von Haller on inflammation
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pmid = 4911942
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*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=Buess
first=H
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year=1970|month=Apr.
title=William Harvey and the foundation of modern haemodynamics by Albrecht von Haller
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pmid = 4914686
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journal=Archiv für Kreislaufforschung
volume=52
issue=1
pages=96–128
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pmid = 4872236
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doi=10.1007/BF02119460
*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=BERG
first=F
authorlink=
year=1964|month=.
title=Correspondence Between Nils Ros'En Von Rosenstein And Albrecht Von Haller
journal=Acta paediatrica. Supplementum
volume=156
issue=
pages=SUPPL 156:103+
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pmid = 14163428
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*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=BUESS
first=H
authorlink=
year=1959|month=Apr.
title=Albrecht von Haller and his Elementa Physiologiae as the beginning of pathological physiology
journal=Medical history
volume=3
issue=2
pages=123–31
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pmid = 13643146
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*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=FOKINA
first=E N
authorlink=
year=1959|month=Feb.
title= [Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) and his anatomical activity; 250th anniversary of his birth.]
journal=Arkhiv anatomii, gistologii i émbriologii
volume=36
issue=2
pages=83–5
publisher = | location = | issn =
pmid = 13638109
bibcode = | oclc =| id = | url = | language = | format = | accessdate = | laysummary = | laysource = | laydate = | quote =
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quotes = yes
last=BUESS
first=H
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year=1958|month=Dec.
title= [Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) and the anatomical illustration; a discussion on his 250th birthday.]
journal=Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr.
volume=83
issue=51
pages=2303–4
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pmid = 13609377
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*cite journal
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last=PERUZZI
first=D
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year=|month=.
title= [Three letters from Giulio Pontedera to Albrecht von Haller.]
journal=La Rassegna di clinica, terapia e scienze affini
volume=56
issue=2
pages=71–4
publisher = | location = | issn =
pmid = 13453759
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*cite journal
quotes = yes
last=HINTZSCHE
first=E
authorlink=
year=1951|month=.
title= [Seven letters from Albrecht von Haller to Johannes Gessner.]
journal=Gesnerus
volume=8
issue=1-2
pages=98–113
publisher = | location = | issn =
pmid = 14860454
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*cite journal
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last=WEGELIN
first=C
authorlink=
year=1950|month=.
title= [Letters of Peter Giller, municipal physician of Saint Gallen, to Albrecht von Haller.]
journal=Gesnerus
volume=7
issue=1-2
pages=1–26
publisher = | location = | issn =
pmid = 14773782
bibcode = | oclc =| id = | url = | language = | format = | accessdate = | laysummary = | laysource = | laydate = | quote =