As an evidence of Rokitansky’s popularity as a teacher I will mention the following fact. In my student days at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, my father, the late Dr. Gurdon Buck, frequently referred to the benefit which he had derived from the lectures and dead-house instruction which he received from Rokitansky during his stay in Vienna (about 1833 or 1834). From the statement made by Prof. Alfred C. Post of New York, I learn that he and my father were Rokitansky’s first American pupils.
Rokitansky’s death occurred in 1878.
Joseph Hyrtl was born at Eisenstadt, Hungary, in 1811. His father was a professional musician (Capellmeister) in the service of Prince Esterhazy. He received his medical training in Vienna, and in 1833, while he was still only a student in the university, he was given the appointment of Prosector in the Anatomical Institute. Two years later he received his doctor’s degree, and in 1837 he was chosen Professor of Anatomy at the University of Prague. According to Puschmann “Hyrtl handled his pen with the same skill as he did the scalpel, and also in his spoken lectures he manifested to a wonderful degree the gift of making dry facts interesting to his auditors, thus keeping them fascinated by his remarks and stimulated to advance in that branch of medical science. The remarkable manner in which the teaching in the Vienna Medical School increased in popularity at this period of its history was in no small degree due to the fact that Hyrtl had, a short time before (in 1845), been called to occupy the chair of anatomy in that institution.” In confirmation of Puschmann’s estimate of Hyrtl’s power to write entertainingly upon anatomical and physiological topics which are commonly classed as “dry” I will furnish here a few extracts from Hyrtl’s General Treatise on Anatomy. And, if the reader will pardon me for referring once more to my father’s interest in those who played a part, either as teacher or as simple friend and companion, in his student life at Vienna, I will preface these extracts with the statement that, more than once in the early sixties, I surprised my father reading with evident pleasure, after the day’s work was over, this very treatise on anatomy.
In his preface Hyrtl says: “A general treatise on anatomy should not confine itself to the mere teaching of this branch of the science of medicine, but should also inspire the students who read the book with a love for this science and the ambition to make original investigations.”
Speaking about the behavior of an artery after it has been divided with the knife Hyrtl explains why, in the living body, the complete division of such a blood-vessel produces a narrowing of the lumen at the point where it has been divided, whereas a similar division of the vessel, if carried out upon the dead body, results only in a retraction of the tube in the direction of its length; in other words, in the corpse the diameter of the lumen remains unchanged as a result of such division. From these and other facts (which he mentions, but which the lack of space compels me to omit) Hyrtl draws the inference that the contractility of the wall of an artery is a phenomenon that occurs only in the living vessel. Then he goes on to remark:—
Beginning at the point where the ligature has been applied the artery loses its symmetrical shape, both above and below the site of the ligature, as far as to the spot where the next collateral branch is given off. At first this distortion of the vessel’s shape is due simply to the fact that its calibre is filled with clotted blood (provisional obliteration). Later, a solid plug takes the place of the soft clot. It is composed of plastic material that, becoming fused with the clot (thrombus), gradually undergoes organization and permanently attaches itself to the wall of the artery through actual growth of tissue (definitive obliteration). Thus there is formed, as the final result of all these changes, a firm and solid cord the circumference of which is smaller than that of the artery from which it springs in direct continuity.
The ligating of one of the larger arteries—as, for example, the brachial or the crural artery—does not interfere seriously with the circulation in the parts located below the point where the ligature has been applied; for the blood continues to flow into these parts although with diminished energy, owing to the fact that it is obliged to travel through roundabout channels (anastomoses).... I once owned a dog upon whom, in the days of my youthful sinning in the domain of physiological experimentation, I performed, within the short period of a single year, the operations of tying the innominate artery and both crural arteries; and, notwithstanding the fact that the blood needed by the adjoining regions was thereby forced to travel to them by unaccustomed routes, the dog’s health did not seem to be in any way affected.
Among the anatomical remarks which Hyrtl makes at various points in the course of his formal treatment of the subject under consideration I find several that seem to me to be worthy of reproduction here. In one place, for instance, he makes the statement that voluntary movements of the auricle of the ear are by no means a rare phenomenon, and in support of this statement he quotes Haller as mentioning (“Elementa Physiologiae,” Tomus V., p. 190) many instances of this kind; he also narrates how B. S. Albinus (1697–1770), the greatest anatomist of the eighteenth century and a colleague of Boerhaave at the University of Leyden, was in the habit of removing his wig whenever he wished to exhibit to the students how great was his control over the movements of the auricle of the ear.
In another place Hyrtl calls attention to the not uncommon error of giving, to the structureless membrane which Descemet described in 1758, the name of Membrana Descemetii. According to him it was first described by the Englishman E. Duddel, twenty-nine years earlier, in his “Disease of the Horny Coat of the Eye,” London, 1729.