The Dawn of Scientific Medicine in the 19th Century

Cindy B. Bitangcor

MSU-College of Medicine

in the 19th Century

Sir Charles Bell (1774 - 1842)

o Distinguished the two types of nerve—sensory and motor

o The Nervous System of the Human Body

o Discoveries under his name: Bell's (external respiratory) nerve: the

long thoracic nerve.

Bell's palsy

Bell's phenomenon

Bell's spasm

Bell-Magendie Law or Bell's Law

Scottish surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian

The Tragedy of Robert Knox (1791 – 1862)

o most popular anatomist of Edinburgh

o born orator and an inspiring teacher

o military surgeon

o was controversial because of the “Burke and Hare” murders

“Burke's the butcher,

Hare's the thief,

Knox the boy who buys the beef!”

Scottish surgeon, anatomist and zoologist

Jacob Henle (1809- 1885) German physician, pathologist and anatomist

o professorships of anatomy successively at Zurich, Heidelberg, and Göttingen

o Handbook of Systematic Anatomy (1866-71) o discovered the tubules of the kidney, first

described the epithelial linings of the surfaces of the body, the muscular coat of the arteries, the minute anatomy of the eye, and various structures in the brain

o prophesy the dawn of bacteriology

- “On Miasma and Contagia"

Paul Broca (1824-80) French physician, surgeon, anatomist, and anthropologist

o discovered the motor speech

center which inaugurated the

localization of cerebral functions.

o discovered methods of measuring

and delineating the skull

o contributed to the knowledge of

prehistoric trephining

Johannes Müller (1801-58)

o Handbuch der Physiologic des Menschen (1833-40)

o Discovered the Müllerian ducts

o confirmed the findings of Bell regarding the spinal nerve roots and their position

o investigated the production of sound by the vocal cords

o one of the first to classify tumours according to their microscopic appearances

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94)

o “On the Conservation of Energy”

o established, by electrical means,

the rate of transmission of nerve

impulses

o Physiological Optics (1856-67),

o invented the ophthalmoscope, the

first to see a living human retina

o Resonance Theory of Hearing

Marshall Hall (1790-1857)

o The Diagnosis of Diseases (1817)

o Discovered reflex action

o introduced the method of

artificial respiration

Claude Bernard (1813-78) o showed that digestion was not

completed in the stomach

o proved that the liver did not merely secrete bile but also sugar, thus the discovery of glycogen

o discovered the Vasomotor mechanism—sympathetic n. vs chorda tympani

o “milieu intérieur”

o Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (1865)

“When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing

theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory,

even when the theory is supported by great names and

generally accepted.”

“A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he

never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless

very significant fragments; and these fragments of

universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.”

Life is a beautiful struggle.