Georgius Prochaska : a pioneer in modern physiology (1749-1820) / V. Kruta.

  • Vladislav Kruta
Date:
[1943]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Georgius Prochaska : a pioneer in modern physiology (1749-1820) / V. Kruta. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Georgius Prochaska: A Pioneer in Modern Physiology (1749-1820) V. KRUTA GEORGIUS PROCHASKA, Czech anatomist and phy¬ siologist of the period of enlightened despotism, is not unknown to the medical men of this country. We may say that his name was almost familiar, mainly among neuro¬ logists, just over a hundred years ago, when it was involved —nearly twenty years after Prochaska’s death—in the bitter controversy over the originality of discoveries and concep¬ tions of the reflex action of the eminent British neurologist and neuro-physiologist, MARSHALL HALL. Shortly after Hall published his two famous Memoirs on the Nervous System (1837), JOHN DURANCE GEORGE, one of the presidents of the Medical Society of University College, London, read, at its meeting on March 30, 1838, a paper on the History of the Nervous System, in which he pointed out, from the material reviewed, that Marshall Hall had been anticipated in most essential phenomena, as well as in their interpretation, claimed as original, by several earlier authors. He quoted Professor SHARPEY to the effect “that of all previous physiologists Prochaska had approached most nearly in his views to those at present entertained,” and remarked that “in Dr. Hall’s account of the ‘Opinions of Former Physiologists’ no such author is mentioned or even alluded to,” and after a review of earlier contributions gave long quotations from Prochaska and compared his statements with those of Marshall Hall, pointing out their striking simi¬ larity. The editorial comment of the London Medical Gazette, where George’s paper was published, contains a still sharper attack : ... It is a very remarkable fact, as stated by Mr. George, that Dr. Hall, though he has published the Opinions of Former Physiologists, makes no mention of the author above-named, and certainly this fact will not be regarded as less remarkable when we inform our readers that there is a copy of Prochaska’s work in the library of the Medical and Chirurgical Society, and that little as the volume was known to the others, one member at least has shown that he fully appreciated its value, by the fact of his having repeatedly taken it out: that member, need we add, is—Dr. Marshall Hall. Thereafter Marshall Hall produced a letter from the librarian of the Medical and Chirurgical Society stating that he had borrowed Prochaska’s works in 1835, 1837 and 1838, whereas his first two papers on that subject were read in November 1832 and June 1833. But the controversy did not end there, and Hall’s opponents remarked that he did 1 2d F
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