Albert von Haller and the Disputationes chirurgicae selectae / by Sir DArcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S. Eng.

  • D'Arcy Power
Date:
1926
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Albert von Haller and the Disputationes chirurgicae selectae / by Sir DArcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S. Eng. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that he accustomed himself to take large and increasing doses of opium which disturbed his digestion, led to great constipation and utterly unfitted him to carry on his work. In 1773 he says that his urine had been turbid for the past three years but it was not until the end of this year that, at the entreaty of his friends in England, he used an enema containing opium which gave him as much relief as the medicine he had been accustomed to swallow. A Scotch student writing to Cullen in 1752 says of him: “ The Professor seems to be a worthy and agreeable gentleman who is so immersed in study that he has no time to spare for company. He literally lives in his library. He not only works himself but he makes his wife, his children, his pupils and his friends intellectual hewers of wood and drawers of water in his service.” It is somewhat remarkable, considering his blameless life and character, that the pen-portrait of Haller should have been drawn by so shameless a blackguard as Jacques Casanova who spent three days in his company at Roche in the spring of 1750 when Haller was 52 and his guest was 35. Casanova says of him in his Memoirs (chapter 14): Mr. Haller was six feet in height, broad in proportion and a fine figure of a man. He was in fact a kind of physical and mental prodigy. .. He told me that he looked upon Morgagni as his master and showed me many of his letters. Haller was a good pindaric poet and a savant of the highest class. He was wholly without ostentation either in his home or when he was amongst those who knew nothing of science. No one knew better than he how to accommodate himself to his company for he was friendly with everyone and never gave offence. If I were asked how he was able to please everybody I should find it hard to give an answer because it is easier to tell of the qualities he had than to speak of those which were wanting. He had no pride and there was an entire absence of self-seeking or of any air of superiority. He had in fact none of the faults which are usually and with justice attributed to the learned and witty. He never boasted of his own works, and if they were mentioned he turned the conversation as soon as he could do so conveniently. He kept a good and abundant but plain table and only drank water with his meals although he allowed himself a small glass of liqueur at dessert which he drowned in a large glass of water’. His wife—for he had married a second time—was still young and bore the imprint of good nature and discretion upon her fine features. There was also a charming daughter of eighteen of modest demeanour, who only opened her mouth occasionally to speak in a low tone to a young man—her tutor—who sat beside her.” This portrait of the great physiological is well drawn by Casanova but it would have been of the very greatest interest to have had a similar portrait of Casanova from the pen of Haller. The two men could have had nothing in common but a love of books. In everything else they differed toto coelo Sir Michael Foster says of him (Lectures on the History of Physiology, p. 206): “ Of the highest importance were his researches on the mechanics of respiration, on the formation of bone and on the development of the embryo; the latter indeed stands out as the most conspicuous piece of work on this subject between Malpighi and Von Baer, though marred by the theoretical speculations attached to it. Of what is perhaps his greatest work the establish¬ ment of the doctrine of muscular irritability, I shall have to speak in detail. For the present I wish to speak of him as an expositor only. When we turn from any of the preceding writers on physiology and open the pages of Haller’s Elementa we feel we have passed into modern times. Save for the strangeness of much of the nomenclature and for small deficiencies in all that relates to the chemical changes of the body, we seem to be reading a modern textbook of the most laborious and exhaustive kind. Haller passes in review all the