Karl von Vierordt

Karl Vierordt ( born July 1, 1818 in Lahr, Baden, † November 22, 1884 in Tübingen ) was a German physiologist.

Family

The ancestors Vierordts had come at the beginning of the 18th century and dedicated to Baden traditionally the teaching profession. His father, Karl Friedrich Vierordt, first worked as a teacher ( Deacon ) on Pädagogium in Lahr, then moved but in 1820 with his family in the residence city of Karlsruhe, where he was promoted to high school teachers and after 1824 at the local high school also taught his own son.

In 1847, he married Pauline ( Seubert ), the daughter of Privy Councillor Karl August Seubert and Wilhelmine (b. Vierordt ). Vierordt was related via the common great-grandfather and his wife. From this connection, had six children, only two of them survived Vierordt.

Education and work

From the age of 14 visited Vierordt next to the school at the Karlsruhe Lyceum also scientific lectures at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic. In the fall of 1836 he enrolled at the Medical Faculty of the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg. In 1837 he was in the Corps recipiert Suevia Heidelberg. He transferred after one year at the Georg -August- University Göttingen, returned back to Heidelberg in 1838 and spent the last year of studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Vierordt passed the medical examinations in Karlsruhe in autumn 1840 with top marks.

His teachers included in the Heidelberg chemist Leopold Gmelin and Friedrich Tiedemann, the embryologist Theodor von Bischoff, the surgeon Maximilian Joseph von Chelius and the gynecologist Franz Naegele. In Göttingen Vierordt had studied with the surgeon Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck and the chemist Friedrich Wöhler. In Berlin, he came up with the great Johann Lukas Schönlein clinician and the physiologist Johannes Müller in touch. After another stay in Berlin and Vienna with Josef Škoda and Carl von Rokitansky Vierordt his doctorate in 1841 in Heidelberg, again as one of the best. He then settled down as a general practitioner in Karlsruhe, his first scientific contribution ( about strabismus ) appeared a year later. 1842 Vierordt was appointed surgeon in the Upper Grand Ducal body Infantry Regiment, 1843 Regimental senior physician.

During the German Revolution 1848/49 Vierordt served in the Baden Oberland in his regiment. He had little sympathy for the revolution, she looked on the contrary, as the work of anarchist agitators. In July 1849, he was as A.O. Professor of Theoretical Medicine ( General Pathology and Therapy, materia medica, History of Medicine ) at the University of Tübingen appointed. 1853 took over Vierordt there the physiological Courses and 1855 the Department of Physiology. In 1864 he became rector of the university. In his speech on the anniversary of Charles I (Württemberg ) on March 6, 1865, he was concerned with the unity of the sciences. In his 35 years in Tübingen, he was very active research activities, which included physiological issues substantially. Almost every year, published important scientific publications Vierordts, a total of 116 His efforts owed ​​the University of Tübingen and the construction of the first (only) Physiological Institute in Germany (1868 ).

Performance

First, Vierordt employed (without laboratory ) with the physiology of respiration (1845 ), and came in view of the relationship of respiration and excretion of carbonic acid to fundamental insights: He showed that during hyperventilation more carbon dioxide ( CO2) is exhaled or the number of breaths CO2 excretion regulated.

Vierordt considered, inter alia, the "heart power " (1850, 1851) and the infusion of saline solution ( 1851). He described the first exact method of counting blood cells labeled with a micrometric glass plate ( 1852) and developed for the first time Sphygmographie for recording the arterial pulse (1854, 1855). Subsequently, a monograph on attempts to measure the flow rate of the blood and its influence on pulse and respiratory rate (1858 ) was published. He constructed a device that could measure blood flow by means of a hydrometric pendulum in the bloodstream exactly ( Haemotachometer ). 1860 saw the first successful textbook plan of the human physiology.

From 1868 Vierordt psychophysical questions turned to: sense of time (1868 " 3 -second window of perception ", 1879), touch (1869, 1870), sensation of movement (1876 ), the child's language (1879 ). Another area of ​​research Vierordts treated spectrophotometry ( 1870-1881 ). He transferred here the basic physical insights of Joseph von Fraunhofer, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff on applications within the medical science: spectral analyzes of hemoglobin, bile and urine and estimation of hemoglobin content in the blood. Vierordt then dealt with the physiology of childhood (1876-1881) and finally with the measurement of the sound and the sound line ( 1878-1885 ).

Works

• New method for quantitative microscopic analysis of blood. Arch Physiol Heilk 11 (1852 )
• The pictorial representation of the human arterial pulse. Arch Physiol Heilk 13 (1854) 284
• The pulse curves of Hämodynamometers and sphygmograph. Arch Physiol Heilk 1 (1857) 552
• The phenomena and laws of the flow velocities of the blood. Frankfurt 1858
• The time sense: according to experiments. Tübingen 1868
• Floor plan of the human physiology. Tübingen 1861 ( 2nd edition 1862, 3rd edition 1864, 4th edition 1871, 5th edition 1877)
• The sound and sound volume and sound conduction capacity of the body. Tübingen 1885