Makers of Modern Medicine

by James J. Walsh

The qualities in Müller's "Hand-book of Physiology," which gave it its greatest value, are the thorough review of all of the physiological literature of the world which it contains, and the greatest number of original observations it details as the basis of the principles enunciated. Müller himself said, in the preface to his "Hand-book": "I need scarcely remark that it is the duty of a scholar to make himself acquainted with the progress of science among all nations; and this is now possible and, moreover, quite indispensable in these days of progress. A purely German, French, or English school of medical science is barbarism; and in Germany we would consider the idea of an isolated English or French system of natural history, physiology or medicine just as barbarous as the notion of Prussian, Bavarian, or Austrian medicine or physiology."

How valuable the book was as the corner-stone of modern German medicine, may best be judged from Virchow's opinion of it. He says in his panegyric of Müller:

"There are two qualities in his 'Hand-book of Physiology' which have particularly enhanced my estimation of its value--its strictly philosophical method and its completeness [{236}] in facts. Since the time of Haller no one has so thoroughly mastered the entire literature of natural history or collected in all directions so many original experiences, and no one has been at the same time familiar with medical practice, as well as with the remotest provinces of zoology. It has been well said that while Haller often, in doubtful questions, espoused a side which must eventually be forced to succumb, Müller always had the luck (if we may call that luck which was preceded by so much intelligent activity), sooner or later, to discern the opinion that was sure, eventually, of the victory. He was wonderfully fitted for the office of critic by his comprehensive knowledge. He knew how to discriminate the healthy from the unsound, the essential or real from the adventitious or accidental. And, in surveying the whole series of forms--often widely different--among which a well-determined plan of nature seemed to be realized, he knew the changes which not infrequently altered considerably the arrangement and composition of the substances within these forms. In Müller, as a physiologist, it is not the genius of the discoverer, nor the ground-breaking nature of his observations we admire, but rather the methodical exactness of investigation in calculating judgment, the confident tranquility and the perfect consummation of his knowledge."

In a word, Müller owed the success of his career to the perfect poise of his intellect and the admirable critical faculty that guided him in the thorny path of knowledge at a time when there were so few landmarks of real scientific significance to show the investigator what the probable course and progress of real science must be. It was for this reason that, as Virchow has said, the reform of newer views became embodied in him, and in spite of the almost monastical retirement of the scholar, the influence of the method introduced by Müller was not limited to physiology, but continues to [{237}] spread beyond that science in ever-widening circles into the domain of all the biological sciences.

Virchow concludes: "Müller vanquished mysticism and phantasms in the organic kingdom and he was most distinctly opposed to every dangerous tendency, whether it was pursued under the pretext of physiology or belief, or merely in accordance with conjectures. Müller did not discover, but he firmly established the exact method of investigating natural sciences: Hence, he did not found a school in the sense of dogmas--for he taught none, but only in the sense of methods. The school of natural science which Müller created knew no community of doctrine, but only of facts and still more of methods."

He did not confine himself in his studies, however, to the physiology and pathology, nor even to the anatomy and embryology of man. After 1840 he devoted himself to the study of invertebrates and investigated the starfish and the pentacrinites. While engaged in his work on the invertebrates he found that the fossil remains of animals had not been carefully explored, so for a time he devoted himself to paleontology. While his salary as professor was ample for his own support, it was not what would be called generous at the present time, yet Müller became so devoted to his science that he paid certain of the workmen to be on the lookout for fossil remains for him in the quarries of the Eifel. He became deeply interested, too, in life in the sea and made his vacations times of specially hard work, investigating the conditions of low life among marine organisms. He passed from one class of life to another. From sea-urchins and starfish to infusoria and polycystina, whose varieties he was himself the first to recognize and describe.

Müller was one of the first to point out that certain of the lower animals could propagate similar and dissimilar [{238}] generations, that is, reproduce by alternate generations. He studied and demonstrated especially the metamorphoses in the echinodermata, and his broad vision and careful observation in this new and surprising scientific field cleared up many things that had been mysteries before.

In paleontology Müller worked with our own Agassiz, then a young man, or perhaps it should rather be said that Agassiz worked with Müller. A paper, for whose compilation they made a series of observations together, appeared at Neufchatel, in 1834. It was a note on the vertebrae of living and fossil dog fishes. At this time Müller was interested in fossil fishes of many kinds and wrote several articles in later years on this subject. Toward the end of Müller's life he studied especially the polycystina, certain of the radiolaria, and some of the many chambered specimens, fossil and living, that were attracting much attention at that time. As a matter of fact he went the day before his death to the zoological museum of Professor Peters in Berlin, in order to obtain some polythalamacea.

How open to advance in science and how ready to encourage the work of others Müller was, may be gathered from his attitude to parasites as the cause of disease, when these began to be discovered. After Professor Schoenlien's discovery of the parasite of favus, Müller became interested in it, confirmed Schoenlein's observations and added something to our knowledge of it. About this time, also, he discovered the psorosperm as a parasite of animals and possibly of man, and devoted considerable attention to it. His work was afterward greatly extended by one of his pupils, Lieberkühn, whose researches with regard to these minute organisms attracted the attention of the medical world.

It is not a little surprising how many of the investigations that afterward were to give fame to Virchow were initiated [{239}] by his great teacher, Müller. It was Müller whose study of tumors led Virchow to devote himself to this subject and give us the best pathological work on it that has ever been written. Virchow himself notes with regret that Müller turned aside from pathology and never finished the promised work which was to have contained his theory of the origin of tumors. Another work in which Virchow followed in Müller's footsteps was the development of craniometry and, in general, the scientific investigations of skulls. Müller had interested himself very much in microcephalic skulls and Virchow assisted him in the investigations of them. Many years afterward Virchow established the science of craniology in the department of anthropology, and succeeded in throwing not a little light on the origins of races by his discoveries in this matter.