The last of a brilliant quartette of physiologists : E. du Bois-Reymond / [William Stirling].

  • Stirling, William, 1851-1932.
Date:
[1897]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The last of a brilliant quartette of physiologists : E. du Bois-Reymond / [William Stirling]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    9279'^ [Beprinted pom the Medical Chronicle,” January, 1897^^ - X THE \ LAST OF A BRILLIANT QOARTEiTTE OF PHYSIOLOGISTS- E. DU BOIS-REYMOND (Professor op Physiology in Berlin). By WM. STIRLING, M.D., 4 Professor of Physiology, The Owens College, Manchester. C. Ludwig, in 1852, dedicated his “Lehrbuch der Physiologie” to his friends E. Briicke in Vienna, E. du Bois-Reymond in Berlin, and H. Helmholtz in Bonn. This brilliant quartette of Physiologists, alas ! all are gone. The last survivor was du Bois-Reymond, who died at Berlin on Dec. 26th, 1896, aged 78. Du Bois, as he was often called, was born at Berlin on Nov. 7th, 1818. His family was of French-Swiss extraction, his father being a native of Neuchatel', while his mother belonged to a French Huguenot family, which was forced to leave France during the reign of Louis XIV. Young du Bois attended the French College at Berlin, but, on his father removing to Neuchatel, he became a scholar there. Returning to Berlin when eighteen years of age, he joined the Philosophical Faculty, but he never “inscribed himself” in the Faculty of Theology, as has been alleged, although he attended some lectures under Neander, the famous Professor of Theology in Berlin, at that time. It is interesting to recall the fact that Boerhaave, Cuvier, and J. Muller all of them started with the study of Theology. In fact, J. Muller, the shoemaker’s son of Coblenz, seemed to be in early youth in a fair way to become a dreamer and a visionary. Perhaps the ease with which Muller could call up subjective ocular phenomena had much to do in directing his attention to the physiology of the senses, especially the eye, which interested him so largely in later life. Accidentally, du Bois heard the lectures on Chemistry by Mitscherlich,