A Depressed Scientist and His Unruly Students in 19Th-Century Berlin
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Müller’s Lab: A Depressed Scientist and His Unruly Students in 19th-Century Berlin Laura C. Otis consequence that our experiences and During the last 10 years of his life, Associate Professor knowledge are shaped by the capacities Müller became famous for his studies of Department of English of our sensory organs. Müller also pro- marine biology, dedicating most of his vided strong evidence that sensory and energy to his greatest love, the universi- motor nerves branched off from the ty’s Anatomical Museum. In 1855, spinal cord along different pathways. returning from a research trip to I would like to thank The John D. and In 1833, when the most prestigious Sweden, he survived a shipwreck but Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation German chair of anatomy and physiolo- was again paralyzed by depression and the Max Planck Institute for the gy became available — a professorship because a young student who had History of Science for supporting the at the University of Berlin — Müller accompanied him drowned. Two years research described in this article. made an all-out effort to win it. He suc- later, Müller began taking large doses of ceeded, and from 1833 onward he opium to combat abdominal pain and became the center of a dynamic group of the insomnia that had plagued him all ow do human interactions affect sci- researchers, investigators who shaped his life. In the spring of 1858, one of Hentific ideas? To answer this ques- the modern sciences of biology, bacteri- these doses may have killed him, either tion, I have been studying the relation- ology, neurophysiology, psychophysics, by accident or as a result of his own will. ships among renowned physiologist pathology and embryology. Between As to whether their teacher took his Johannes Müller and his students during 1833 and 1840 Müller published several own life, his students disagree, as they 1833 -1858, when the modern laborato- editions of his Handbook of Physiology, did in the lab. ry was first starting to develop. What I which would become the standard text- A second reason Müller’s group is so have been learning about Müller and his book on the subject for much of the interesting to explore is the variety of students has supported my growing idea 19th century. Yet strangely, despite his his students’ achievements. Jakob that there can be no sharp division success as a physiologist, Müller devot- Henle, Müller’s first and favorite assis- between life and work. The experiments ed himself increasingly to anatomy, per- tant, anticipated Louis Pasteur in sug- that Müller’s group performed and the forming almost no physiological experi- gesting that diseases were caused by liv- discoveries that they made are insepara- ments after 1840. ing organisms. Theodor Schwann bly linked to their everyday experiences In 1847-48, in addition to his regu- demonstrated that all animals consisted in 19th-century Berlin. lar duties, Müller served as rector (pres- of cells. Emil Du Bois-Reymond pro- What makes Müller and his group ident) of Berlin University. In the spring posed the first experimentally supported an especially interesting lab to investi- of 1848, street fighting broke out mechanism for nerve impulse conduc- gate? First, Müller’s own life reflects the between government troops and work- tion and collaborated with instrument shifts of 19th-century politics as a seis- ers demanding political rights and better mograph represents the earth’s motions living conditions, and hundreds of peo- (Haberling, Koller). A shoemaker’s son, ple were shot. At the university, some of Müller began studying medicine at the the students and faculty sided with the University of Bonn just three years after workers, including Müller’s former stu- the Prussians reopened it following the dent Rudolf Virchow, who fought at the withdrawal of Napoleon. During barricades. The struggle was complicat- Müller’s second year as a medical stu- ed by right-wing student factions calling dent at the University of Bonn, his father for a united German empire. At the died, and he survived financially only time, Germany consisted of many loose- with the help of powerful patrons, ly affiliated states, only some of which including the Prussian minister of cul- were ruled by the Prussian king. In ret- ture. As a researcher, Müller worked at rospect, Müller’s students agreed that a frenetic pace, studying the sensory, their conservative professor was no nervous, lymphatic, circulatory and politician, the worst possible negotiator reproductive systems, sometimes simul- between rebellious students and reac- taneously. In 1828, just after he married tionary officials. As a result of this the musically gifted Nanny Zeiler, he stress, Müller suffered another mental collapsed from overwork, suffering a breakdown and could not resume his long, depressive episode from which experiments until the spring of 1849. many feared he would never recover. Historian of medicine Johannes Steudel But Müller did, going on to make his believes that Müller was a cyclic manic greatest contribution to physiology: the depressive, but this kind of categoriza- concept of specific sense energies. This tion imposes 20th-century medicine on theory dictated that the nerves of our a 19th-century condition (Steudel, 115). sensory organs are designed to respond Almost all of Müller’s troubles can be A “rococo” sea urchin embryo drawn by Müller in 1848. to only one kind of stimulus, with the explained by stress and overwork. 18 makers to design more efficient physio- Müller’s lab from every possible perspec- physiology chair, Du Bois-Reymond has logical set-ups (Dierig, Finkelstein). tive. One must read them as one reads a become the most cited source on what it Hermann von Helmholtz measured the novel by William Faulkner, making was like to work with Müller. He is also velocity of nerve impulses and proposed judgments about the situation only after the source who must be read most care- our currently accepted model of color hearing from every individual character. fully. From 1839 until 1858, Du Bois- vision. Rudolf Virchow, who took Müller’s students are not always Reymond struggled to study the electri- Müller’s courses but was never part of his kind in their assessments of their men- cal activity of nerves and muscles, research group, convinced physicians to tor. In the history of psychology, Müller depending on Müller for economic and think about disease at the cellular level. has become known as the man who academic survival. While he became an In his political career, Virchow drove changed the study of the nervous system associate professor in the early 1850s, through legislation that vastly improved from philosophical speculation into this often meant performing dissections public health, including the funding of experimental science. But if we believe for Müller’s museum collection instead the Berlin sewer system in the 1870s. his students, they accomplished this of his own experiments, and begging Robert Remak, the first Jew to be task almost in spite of him rather than Müller to order equipment he needed appointed professor at the University of because of him. While they all agree that for his physiological work. Coming Berlin, discovered the three layers from Müller encouraged them to perform from an elite, artistic family, Du Bois- which human embryos develop. Ernst experiments, they complain that Müller Reymond found the subservience Haeckel, a philosopher as well as an knew and wanted to know little about humiliating and expressed his annoy- embryologist, became famous for the ance in sarcastic letters to his friends. In controversial theory that ontogeny (indi- 1849 he wrote to physiologist Carl vidual development) recapitulates phy- Ludwig, “Müller has kept me occupied logeny (the development of a species or at the museum, carrying out what is in race). Like Müller, these students hoped his opinion the highest activity of the to learn how nerves and muscles worked human intellect, namely, classifying fos- and how animals grew and developed; sil vermin” (Du Bois-Reymond and however, with their different personali- Ludwig, 44, 7 August, 1849). ties, they approached these questions in Du Bois-Reymond’s memorial address extremely different ways. to Müller buries his mentor rather than Certainly the interactions among praising him. Halfway through the 160- Müller’s group raise intriguing questions page text, which could not possibly have for historians of science, but for a third been read in one sitting, he turns reason, they are particularly interesting sharply critical, presenting Müller as a to an English professor. Each of Müller’s scientist who encouraged physiological students describes him in a different experimentation in others but could way, creating his own version of what never free himself from the misguided their depressed, sleepless leader was ideas that animals were controlled by an like. Literary critic Harold Bloom has undefinable “life force” and that life was coined the phrase “the anxiety of influ- organized in a grand scheme. As Du ence” to describe poets’ needs to define Bois-Reymond tells the story, Müller themselves in opposition to previous Johannes Müller as drawn by a British artist (circa 1837). becomes a failed predecessor whose best generations (Bloom). This concept work the younger scientist successfully applies equally well to scientists. We can math, physics, chemistry and new tech- resumed. Most interestingly, Du Bois- learn about Müller only by comparing nological developments. While he per- Reymond shows his awareness that his his surviving texts (especially his let- formed crucial physiological experi- speech will shape historians’ images of ters) to those of his students. But in ments in the 1820s and early 1830s, his Müller. When the Academy published describing Müller, each student creates a real goal was an 18th-century one: to his speech in 1860, he wrote in a foot- different character, one who makes the understand the “grand plan” of life by note that “as a primary source on the life student and his own scientific decisions collecting specimens of every known and work of a man like Johannes Müller, look good (Holmes, Jardine).