Theodor Meynert

Theodor Meynert ( born June 15, 1833 in Dresden, † May 31 1892 in Klosterneuburg, Lower Austria ) was a German - Austrian psychiatrist and neuroanatomist. Meynert was from 1870 until his death professor at the University of Vienna.

Meynert was next to Paul Flechsig in Leipzig as the leading European neuroanatomist. Sigmund Freud, Auguste Forel and Carl Wernicke studied with or worked under him.

Biography

Theodor Meynert came on June 15, 1833 in Dresden, the son of the writer, critic and historian Hermann Meynert ( 1808-1895 ) to the world. His mother, Marie Meynert (born Emmering ) was, before her marriage singer at the Dresden Opera. Theodor Meynert was three years old when his father was appointed to the editorial board of the Viennese theater newspaper and the family moved to Vienna.

Meynert studied after completion of Scots school at the University of Vienna Medical and was designed by the great pathologist Carl von Rokitansky (1804-1878) sponsored. This habilitated him in 1865 in the discipline " structure and function of the brain and spinal cord ." Simultaneously with his habilitation took over the post of Meynert secondary physician and prosector at the Vienna asylum. In 1870 he was appointed associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna and Director of the newly established I. Psychiatric University Clinic of Vienna General Hospital. In 1873 was appointed full Professor Meynert. It was not until twelve years later his wish was fulfilled after his clinic technically complementary department for nervous patients.

Meynert, which if was tense, extremely irritable and sensitive, suffered a long time before his death in dizziness and even to part paralysis, which were accompanied by slurred speech, and he tried to hide it from its surroundings. A sarcastic attitude should Meynert have become his own, as his beloved son, Charles (* 1868), not yet 17 years, 1884, died of a lung disease. In April of the last year of life Theodor Meynert had to leave due to illness, the head of the clinic. He retired to his estate in Klosterneuburg (Lower Austria ), Leopold Street 62, [Note 1], rest out apparently and wanted to take his job back, the sooner, when he learned that he would be elected in the fall of the University rector. A sudden lung affection prevented this, however, and Theodor Meynert wide in the evening hours of May 31, 1892 in his home in Klosterneuburg. He was on 2 June 1892 in Klosterneuburg, cemetery Upper Town, buried.

In February 1900, the Austrian sculptor Theodor Khuen ( 1860-1922 ) was commissioned by the Ministry of Education to make a certain for the arcaded courtyard of the University of Vienna bust Meynert. Furthermore, located in the Children's Hospital of Vienna General Hospital, Währinger Gürtel 18, a portrait of Theodor Meynert.

In 1894 Alsergrund (9th district ) was named after him in the Meynertgasse Vienna; as well as Klosterneuburg a traffic area of the same name knows.

His daughter was the narrator and poet Dora von Stockert - Meynert ( 1870-1947 ). She wrote the 1930 biography " Theodor Meynert and his time". His grandson was the psychiatrist Franz Günther von Stockert ( 1899-1967 ).

Work

Meynert's work sat in the midst, in the second golden age of the Viennese medical school. He himself was next to Wilhelm Griesinger in Berlin the founder of a science-oriented psychiatry and, in the spirit of Rokitansky, a comparative anatomy of the central nervous system. He succeeded also morphologically to separate the systems of involuntary reflex movements of those subsequently developed paths of arbitrary innervation. Meynert brought into the complicated fiber system of the brain is an overview, as he called the " association systems " as the connection paths of individual brain sections of one hemisphere of the brain and connecting the corresponding points of both hemispheres " Kommissurenbahnen the" faced " corona radiata systems" that a projection of the receptive processes the outside world to ensure on the cerebral cortex and secondly conduct the pulses to the periphery of the cerebral cortex. His decisive action on brain anatomy was probably the discovery of a system of Verschiedenschichtigkeit the individual cortex regions with somewhat typical cell shapes. He thus became the founder of the cytoarchitecture in terms of a regional breakdown of the cell cortex, which expanded by Korbinian Brodmann and in Vienna by Constantin Economo in a monumental work, which he dedicated to the memory of Meynert, a certain perfection was supplied.

In addition to the special ground- anatomical issues Meynert employed also problems of morphological pathology. He delineated the findings in progressive paralysis of other hirnatrophischen processes.

Meynert had in his time abroad to an outstanding degree school making: Carl Wernicke, the Swiss psychiatrist August Forel, Gabriel Anton and Franz Chvostek junior were his pupils.

Meynert was editor of the "Vienna Yearbook of Psychiatry " and co-editor of the " Archives of Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases " (Berlin). Together with Maximilian Leidesdorf he published the " quarterly magazine of Psychiatry " ( Neuwied and Leipzig).

Works (selection)

( selected from a total of 127 publications)

• The exposure of the beam profile in the cerebrum tribe. In: Austrian Journal of practical medicine. 1865, ZDB - ID 541079-4
• The construction of large - cortex and its local differences, together with a pathological- anatomical corollary. Leipzig 1868
• From the brain of mammals. In: Salomon Stricker: Handbook of the teaching of the tissues of humans and animals. 1869
• Psychiatry. Clinic of diseases of the forebrain, based on its construction, performance and nutrition. 1884
• Clinical lectures on psychiatry scientific basis for studies Rende and doctors, lawyers and psychologists. Vienna, 1859 and 1890
• Poems. ( Published posthumously by Dora v. Stockert - Meynert ). Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig, 1905.

Eponyms

• Meynert bundle ( fasciculus retroflexus ): fiber tract of the nuclei habenulae ( epithalamus ) to the interpeduncular nucleus ( midbrain tegmentum ).
• Meynert hood crossing ( decussation tegmental ): the dorsal midline of the midbrain tegmentum ( midbrain hood ) crossing fibers of the tractus tectospinal.
• Meynert Basalkern (nucleus basalis ): a collection of nerve cells in substantia inominata.
• Meynert layer: layer of cells in the visual cortex in the calcarine sulcus.
• Meynert axis: Vertical axis through the brain stem. Your faced is the Forel -axis.