Contemporaries of Travers were: Abram Colles; John Cheyne (1777-1830), of Dublin, who wrote on Diseases of Children and described "Cheyne-Stokes respiration." William Stokes (1804-1878), also of Dublin, who distinguished himself in 1857 by a great work, entitled A Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Chest; Robert Graves (1797-1853), Professor of Medicine in the King's and Queen's College, Dublin, who published clinical lectures of his own, besides many clinical reports in connection with Stokes. Graves was one of the first to oppose the "absolute diet" of the earlier physicians in the management of febrile maladies, and requested that his epitaph should have but one line—"He fed fevers!"
"The School of Natural Philosophy" was the title applied to a system which, in Germany, ran parallel with that of Broussais, being the legitimate outcome of the medical philosophy of the eighteenth century which had originated there, and also a revival of opposition thereto on the side of realism. It led into speculative extremes, which finally sobered down, because of the meaningless scholastic phrases often introduced, and thus broke a path for the subsequent enthusiasm in behalf of French positivism in medicine. Those who constituted this school were, for the most part, men of importance, but were followed by a number of imbecile representatives. Use was made of the abstract doctrine of the philosophy of identity and the imponderables, such as electricity, mechanical forces, and magnetism, contrasted with which were the dimensions of matter and certain qualities, like sensibility, irritability, etc. Perhaps the greatest influence of this teaching was in the department of embryology and physiology, where Johannes Müller displayed his remarkable activity. Among the most distinguished representatives of the natural-philosophy school was Oken (1779-1851), of Bavaria, who subsequently taught in Munich, Jena, and Zürich, and published a large work on natural history, which did much for the popularization of this science; he explained that the skull is made up from a series of vertebræ; also discovered the Wolffian bodies, and was such a power in his way that Agassiz characterized him not only as "a master in the art of teaching," but as "a courageous and ruling spirit." Others of this school were: von Walther (1782-1849), eminent as a surgeon; Dollinger (1770-1841), of Bamberg, the distinguished leader of the Old Catholics; Reil and Procliaska, anatomists; Troxler and Schelling, philosophers and anatomists; Treviranus, the microscopist; Malfatti, Kilian, Spindler; Schmidt, of Vienna; and others too numerous to mention.
As a successor to the School of Natural Philosophy came the School of Natural History (1831-1850). which made important concessions to realism; its most prominent members were from South Germany. This school was based partially upon the philosophy of Nature, and expired almost suddenly. One of its most eminent exponents was Krukenberg, whose therapeutic creed was that "Physicians should be filled with pious reverence toward Nature; the organism is a whole, and must be contemplated in this sense; medical art is, undoubtedly, capable of decisive action, but let us not mistake that in many cases its activity is quite superfluous, in very many null and inadequate, and in many injurious." This school was the expression of the turn medicine was compelled to take in order to escape the after-effects of the one-sided, ideal, systematizing tendency of the eighteenth century (whose final outcome was natural philosophy), and to square itself with the realism and positivism of the nineteenth.
Schonlein (1763-1874), of Bamberg, outlined a system that taught pathological and anatomical revelations as concrete expressions of the independent entity disease, whose relation to the organism is as that of a parasite sojourning temporarily in it; he also constructed a classification of diseases, something after the manner of the botanical classification of de Candolle. One of his best-known pupils was Canstadt (1807-1850), whose Jahresbericht has preserved his name. Siebert, of Jena, famous as a diagnostician, and Haeser, the medical historian, belonged to this school.
An offshoot of the French school of pathological anatomy and diagnosis was the so-called New Vienna School, which aided the French system in obtaining high recognition in German medicine, and gained its first influence from the labors of Wünderlich (1815-1857); next to whom should be mentioned Baron von Rokitansky (1804-1878),—a Bohemian,—one of the most famous men in modern times, and who exercised a profound influence, even in foreign countries,—particularly in Italy and Russia. Von Rokitansky worked for a long time in miserable quarters in Vienna, but finally a magnificent building was specially erected for him. He was loaded with honors, and took his seat in the Austrian House of Deputies. Two sons are well known in medicine to-day, and two more have achieved reputation as singers,—a circumstance which the father embodied in the bon mot that "two of his sons howled and two of them healed." He transplanted into Vienna the tendency of the earliest pathologico-anatomical school, which captivated all by its novelty and interest, and in the post-mortem room and the clinical-lecture room he converted medicine in Germany to the realism of the nineteenth century. He was, indeed, the Van Swieten of his time in his influence upon educational affairs. His works are distinguished by simplicity, clearness, and logical order. He performed more than thirty thousand autopsies; for fourteen years he studied the defects of the septum of the heart and the comparative anatomy of the uterus and genito-urinary organs, yet paid little attention to the microscope or to applied medicine. He was a pathologist, pure and simple.
A friend and co-laborer,—Skoda (1803-1881),—also a Bohemian, was little, if any, less famous. In 1839 he gave to the world his famous work on Auscultation and Percussion; in 1847 became professor at Prague, and was the first man to lecture in German. In spite of his bachelor peculiarities, his taciturnity, and his heedlessness, he was very popular, and left a fortune,—quite in contrast to Rokitansky, who died poor. His scientific merit was based upon the fact that he overthrew the specific and pathognomonic arrangement of sounds, as taught by the French, and substituted therefor a category, based upon the physical constitution and shape of organs and tissues. He endeavored to develop a strictly scientific system of physics out of the empirical French doctrine of physical signs, and in his work on Physical Diagnosis he displayed an independent spirit, though as one who had received his impulse from France. He was the first in Germany to insist upon the merits of Avenbrugger, and was the leading diagnostician of his time of the new Vienna school. Skoda was the first for whom was created, in Vienna, a specialty after the French model,—that is, a special division for patients suffering from thoracic diseases. Great as he was, we must yet lay it up against him that through his influence,—first in Vienna and afterward throughout Germany,—practical medicine degenerated into simple diagnosis, and that, by his observations on the natural course of disease, undisturbed by therapeutics, he became the founder and exponent of expectant or nihilistic therapeutics,—the harbinger of a very cheerless period in the history of medicine.
CHAPTER X
Age of Transition (concluded).—New Vienna School (concluded): von Hebra, 1816-1880. Czermak and Türck, Jager, Arlt, Gruber, Politzer.—German School of Physiological Medicine: Roser, 1817-1888.—School of Rational Medicine: Henle, 1809-1855.—Pseudoparacelsism: Rademaclier, 1772-1849.—Hydrotherapcvtics: Priessnitz, 1799-1852.—Modern Vitalism: Virchow.—Seminalism: Bouchut.—Parasitism and the Germ-theory: Davaine, 18111882. Pasteur, 1822-1895. Chauveau, 1827—. Klebs, 1834—. F. J. Cohn, 1828—. Koch, 1843—. Lister, 1827—.—Advances in Physical Diagnosis: Laënnec, 1781-1826. Piorry, 1794-1879.—Surgery: Delpeeli, 1772-1832. Stromeyer, 1804-1876. Sims, 1813-1883. Bozeman, 1825—. McDowell, 1771-1830. Boyer, 1757-1853. Larrey, 1766-1842. Dupuy-tren, 1777-1835. Cloquet, 1790-1883. Civiale, 1792-1867. Vidal, 18031856. Velpeau, 1795-1868. Malgaigne, 1806-1865. Nélaton, 1807-1874. Sir Astley Cooper, 1748-1841. Brodie, 1783-1862. Guthrie, 1785-1856. Syme, 1799-1870. Simpson, 1811-1870. Langenbeck, 1810-1887. Billroth, 1819-1894.