Dr. Guenter B. Risse, M.D., Ph.D.

History of Physiology, by Karl E. Rothschuh. Editor and translator. Huntington: R. E. Krieger, 1973 and 1981.

This is the first general history of physiology published in English. Originally written by the German physician-historian Karl E. Rothschuh in 1953, this survey has been carefully updated, translated and furnished with additional chapters and bibliographies by Guenter B. Risse. The result is a fine bird’s eye view of the subject, accessible to both the general reader and historians of science and medicine. A series of charts, tables, and photographs depict the growth of physiology. Dates of events, titles of publications, concepts, methods and techniques provide essential information. Developments during the past century are presented as products of groups and schools of affiliated scientists, a useful device that exposes the web of personal relationships between teachers and their students, institutional rivalries, and international influences.
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Introduction
Preface to the English Edition
Preface to the German Edition
Translator’s Introduction

CHAPTER I
Physiology in Antiquity

1. The Beginnings of Physiological Thought with the Greek Philosophers of Nature and the Hippocratic Physicians
2. The physiology of Aristotle and the School of Alexandria
3. Galen of Pergamon and Roman Physiology

CHAPTER II
Physiology During the Middle Ages

1. Early Medieval Times—Islamic Physiology—Salerno
2. Scholasticism-Renaissance-Humanism and the End of the Middle Ages

CHAPTER III
Foundation and Development of Physiology in the Sixteenth-and Seventeenth Centuries

1. The Renaissance of Anatomy in the Sixteenth Century
2. The Application of Chemical Principles in Physiology by the Iatrochemists
3. The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood
4. The Application of Mechanical Principles for the Solution of Physiological Problems. The Seventeenth-Century Iatrophysicists
5. Further Physiological Developments in the Seventeenth Century
6. The Beginnings of Microscopical Observations and their Importance for the Solution of Physiological Problems

CHAPTER IV
The Physiology of the Enlightenment

1. Herman Boerhaave, Friedrich Hoffmann, george E. Stahl
2. Albrecht von Haller and the State of Physiology in the Midlle of the Eighteenth Century
3. Physiology at the End of the Eighteenth Century

CHAPTER V
Nineteenth-Century Physiology: The Beginnings

1. General Lines of Development in Nineteenth-Century Physiology
2. The so-called “Romantic: Interlude in Physiology
3. Empirical Physiology in France and Germany 1800-1850 (Bichat--Magendie--Purkinje--Wagner—Weber
4. The Development of British Physiology 1800-1848
5. American Physiology From its Beginnings Until 1860

CHAPTER VI
Johannes Müller, Carl Ludwig and their Circle of Students

1. Johannes Müller
2. Carl Ludwig
3. Hermann von Helmholtz and his Disciples
4. Emil Du Bois-Reymond and his Disciples
5. Ernst Brücke and his Disciples
6. Other Disciples of Johannes Müller
7. The School of Carl Ludwig

CHAPTER VII
Nineteenth=and Twentieth-Century Physiology:
Western Europe—America—Russia

1. Claude Bernard and French Physiology between 1848-1914
2. The Chemical Current in Physiology, Especially in Germany
3. Other German Schools of Physiology: Calt Voit, Friedrich L. Goltz and Ewald Hering
4. British Physiology since 1848
5. American Physiology: 1870-1930
6. The Development of Russian Physiology in the Nineteenth-and Twentieth Centuries
7. The Development of Scandinavian, Dutch and Berlgian Physiology in the Nineteenth Century With an Appendix on Japan
8. Physiology in the Twentieth Century
9. Review—Prospects—Epilogue--Index

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