Rudolf Heidenhain
Peter Henrich Rudolf Heidenhain ( born January 29, 1834 in Marie Werder, West Prussia); † October 13, 1897 in Breslau) was a German physiologist and professor.
Family
Rudolf Heidenhain was the son of a doctor who was converted in 1832 from the Jewish to the Protestant faith. He was the eldest of six sons of the family who did all of the medical profession. Heidenhain married in 1859 Fanny, daughter of the physiologist Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann. From this marriage six sons, including the anatomist Martin Heidenhain. Ten years after the death of Fanny (1867 ) married Rudolf Heidenhain Mathilde ( Kohli ), daughter of the chief forester in Marie Werder, who bore him three daughters. Heidenhain died from the effects of duodenal ulcer.
Education and work
With just under eight years, he attended high school in West Prussia. He was interested in preference for natural history and physics. When a pharmacist he became familiar in private lessons with basic concepts of chemistry and also had a fondness for botany, which he studied in the wild. At age 16 ( 1850), he enrolled for the study of natural sciences and medicine at the Albertus University of Königsberg. In 1852 he moved to the Friedrich - University of Halle, where he was the physiologist Alfred Volkmann taught as famulus employed. In 1854 he continued his studies at the Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin, where he could work as an assistant in the laboratory of Emil Heinrich Du Bois- Reymond and observe its electrophysiological experiments. 1854 doctorate Heidenhain in Berlin on the cardiac nerves in the frog.
After the medical exam in 1856 Heidenhain returned to Halle back, was employed by Julius Vogel, with Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann and his habilitation with a thesis on the blood volume determination in mammals. In 1859 he took over, only 25 years old, as the successor of the anatomist Karl Reichert Bogislaus the chair of physiology and histology of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau. For the academic year 1872/73 he was elected rector. Here lived and worked Rudolf Heidenhain until his death.
Performance
Heidenhain was as conscientious and patient observer and experimenter, as an inspiring teacher and versatile researchers. He belonged to the newer generation of physiologists of the 19th century ( such as Adolf Fick, Hermann Helmholtz and Julius Bernstein), in contrast to the vitalism searched for mechanistic reasons for the physical reality and contributed to the consolidation of modern physiology. Even Rudolf Steiner recognized the importance of research Heidenhain, referring in his obituary position to the " mechanistic conception of the phenomena of life ." Heidenhain came with work, microscopy, histology, physiological experiments and chemical analyzes combined to scientific findings, which are still valid today. In addition, Heidenhain was a proponent of experimental animal methods ( vivisection ), which he regarded as essential to medical science. Heidenhain self published 70 original papers. 1859-1897 published a further 170 works of the physiological institute that emerged under his guidance and cooperation. Heidenhain was one of the internationally most influential physiologist of his time.
Gland physiology
Heidenhain discovered different functions of serous and mucous salivary glands, which he was able to demonstrate histologically. He showed two distinct types of glandular cells in the gastric mucosa, pepsin and hydrochloric acid producing cells. He first described secretion processes in the gland cell ( Granulavorstufen, secretion). Further systematic studies focused on the pancreas, liver, lymph glands and the mammary gland. Moreover, he rejected the purely physical explanation of the glandular secretion (diffusion, osmosis), after he had examined the behavior of kidney cells and water excretion of Bowman's capsule, the urinary excretion was unable to map the renal tubules. The absorption of nutrients from the small intestine into the blood proved to Heidenhain's research, according to a complex process that can take place against a concentration gradient.
Muscle Physiology
Heidenhain discovered by thermoelectric measurements for the first time that it is at the lowest muscle contraction in a temperature rise ( about 0.001 to 0.005 ° C). He also showed that increasing the thermo-mechanical total energy of the muscle activity with increasing active tension. He showed that the muscle mobilizes more energy when it is contracted against resistance. He also revealed that the energy consumption of the working and tiring muscles is regulated very efficiently and economically.
Neurophysiology
Heidenhain first described the influence of the vagus nerve on the heart rate and the force development of the heart muscle. He also dealt with reactions of the autonomic nervous system to sensory stimuli (eg, blood pressure and skin temperature). He observed that the increased blood flow and warming of the skin to cool the blood lead. Therefore, the body temperature decreases.
1880 Heidenhain was in the audience a demonstration of the Danish stage hypnotist Carl Hansen in Wroclaw, marveling at the effects of suggestion and then began experimental studies of the physiological mechanisms of " animal magnetism ". He noticed the individually varying degrees of suggestibility in humans. One of his brothers was particularly susceptible to suggestion and introduced himself as Family available. Neurophysiologically declared Heidenhain hypnosis as a state of reduced activity in the cerebral cortex and coined the term " central inhibition " (cortical inhibition). Ivan Petrovich Pavlov observed decades later, who had studied with Heidenhain 1877 and 1884, with experiments on the conditioned reflex hypnotic states of his experimental animals. As a cause he believed in 1910 also an inhibition of the cerebral cortex (partial cortical inhibition).
Awards
- Meeting President of the Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, Wroclaw 1874
- Secret Medical Officer, 1882
- President of the Silesian Society for patriotic culture, 1885-1897
- Cothenius Medal of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 1884
- Baly Medal of the Royal College of Physicians
- Red Eagle Order 2nd Class with Oak Leaves
- Member or honorary member of 19 scientific societies at home and abroad
Works
- Historical and Experimental on muscle tone, Arch f Anatomy, Physiology and Scientific Medicine in 1856
- Contribution to the anatomy of Peyer's glands, Arch f Anatomy, Physiology and Scientific Medicine in 1859
- Physiological studies, Berlin 1856
- Studies of the Physiological Institute at Breslau, Leipzig 1861-1868
- Mechanical power, heat evolution and metabolism in the muscular, Leipzig 1864
- The vivisection in the service of medicine, 1879
- The so-called bestial magnetism. Physiological observations, Leipzig 1880
- The vivisection in the health sector, 1884