Robert Whytt
Robert Whytt ( born September 6, 1714 Edinburgh, † April 15, 1766 ) was an English physician and former neuroscientist.
Life
His father Robert Whytt of Bennochie, a member of the Scottish legal profession, Scottish Bar, died six months before the birth of Whytt. His mother, Jean, daughter of Antony Murray of Woodend, Perthshire, died when he was six years old. Robert Whytt was the second son of the family.
Whytt completed his MA at the University of St Andrews in 1730. The Doctor of Medicine ( MD) he acquired in 1736 in Reims, 1737 in St. Andrews. In 1738 he became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh ( FRCPE ). He was its president was in the time from 1763 to 1766. 's 1747 " Professor of Theory of Medicine " at the University of Edinburgh. In 1752 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society FRS. Whytt studied medicine in Edinburgh, Paris and Leiden. The focus of his work was research on diseases of the nervous system, reflexes, tubercular meningitis, bladder stones and hysteria. From 1761, he was the personal physician to King George III of Scotland. In 1763 he became president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
He was married twice. His first wife was Helen Robertson, sister of James Robertson (1710-1788), a British officer and Governor of New York Province, died in 1741, without leaving any children together. In 1743 he married again, Louise Balfour, daughter of James Balfour of Pilrig in Midlothian, she died in 1764. Whytt with his second wife had six children.
After his death on April 15, 1766 in Edinburgh his remains were in a public funeral, buried in the Greyfriars Kirkyard.
Services
Robert Whytt established the reputation of Scottish medicine as a predecessor of William Cullen. He created in 1751 a first of supernatural notions such as by terms such as spiritus animalis largely freed somatic- neurological medicine. He confirmed in particular that motion can be set by a nerve impulse, even without initiation by a higher will or an external stimulus, in transition; ie there is " vital " or " involuntary motions " without " express consciousness ," that is, without a directing body as the soul steel. The same principle of life exists in both animals and humans, and in humans is the cause for the mind. Because of these views, it came to academic dispute with Albrecht von Haller. As a " neurologist " Whytt first described some highly important reflexes such as the pupillary reaction to light, pupillary rigidity after destruction of the Four Hills region of the brain, sneezing, retching, coughing, micturition reflex erection and ejaculation. Whytt also wrote the only significant book about hysteria of the second half of the century in which he proof as a precursor Neurologisierung psychiatric issues.
Works (selection)
- Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (1751 )
- An Essay on the Virtue of Lime -Water in the Cure of the Stone (1752 )
- Physiological Essays (1755 )
- Review of the Controversy Concerning the Sensibility and Moving Power of the Parts of Men and Other Animals (1761 )
- Nervous, Hypochondriac or Hysteric Diseases, ( 1764)
- Observations on the Nature, Causes and Cure of Those Disorders Which Have Been Commonly Called Nervous, Hypochondriac or Hysteric ( 1767)
- Observations on Dropsy of the Brain ( 1768)
- The Works of Robert Whytt, MD ( 1768)
Biography
- RK French, Robert Whytt, the Soul, and Medicine, London: The Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1969