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). In reading living animal and arranging them in his [my account] may perhaps claim a valu- their works, we have to keep in mind Anatomical Museum. Theodor Schwann able place in the history of science” (Du Madame de Merteuil’s warning in wrote that “the physical approach, Bois-Reymond, 299). The most widely Choderlos de LaClos’ Les Liaisons which I beat into physiology and which cited primary source of information on Dangereuses: “you must see that when means pursuing real explanations for Müller’s lab was keenly aware that he you write to someone, it is for him and the phenomena of life . . . was some- was one. not for you: you must therefore try to thing Joh. Müller never had” (Du Bois- Ernst Haeckel, 17 years younger tell him less what you think, than what Reymond, 222). In Schwann’s estimate, than Du Bois-Reymond, created a differ- will please him most” (LaClos, my Müller had little or nothing to do with ent picture of Müller but likewise depict- translation). The letters of Müller’s his discovery of animal cells. Du Bois- ed him as a master who failed to solve group reveal only the thoughts they Reymond agreed that “what we call the problems Haeckel would address in his wanted their readers to attribute to aesthetics of experimentation was for- own work. According to Haeckel, the them. Their texts do not offer direct eign to him” (Du Bois-Reymond, 158). troubled professor would spend Sunday access to the writers’ minds, and one can As the deliverer of Müller’s memorial afternoons in his Anatomical Museum, imagine the truth only by hearing about address and the inheritor of the Berlin “pacing for hours through the expansive

19 rooms, his hands folded behind his back, References busily contemplating the secret affinities Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. of vertebrates, whose ‘holy mystery New York; Oxford: Oxford University (Rätsel)’ the aligned skeletons were Press, 1997. preaching in such a powerful way.” Cahan, David. Introduction. Letters of Once, recalls Haeckel, he “shyly” asked Hermann Helmholtz to His Parents: The Müller whether all of these vertebrates Medical Education of a German Scientist 1837-1846. Edited by David Cahan. could have descended from a common Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993. ancestor. “Ah, if we only knew!” cried Dierig, Sven. “Apollo’s Tragedy: Philhellenism Müller. “If you could ever solve this puz- and Experiment in Emil Du Bois- zle (Rätsel), you would achieve the high- Reymond’s Laboratory.” Unpublished man- est possible goal!” (Haeckel, 23-25; uscript, Oct. 2001. Kornmilch, 862; Krausse, 224). In 1899 Du Bois-Reymond, Emil. “Gedächtnisrede Laura Otis earned a B.S. cum laude in molecu- Haeckel titled his best-selling book auf Johannes Müller.” In Reden. 2 vols. lar biophysics and biochemistry from Yale about evolution and society Die Leipzig: Veit, 1887. University and was certain she wanted to study — and Carl Ludwig. Two Great Scientists of the chemistry of the brain. While enrolled in a Welträtsel (The Riddle of the Universe). neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of the Nineteenth Century: Correspondence of Like Du Bois-Reymond, Haeckel is a California, San Francisco, she conducted good story-teller, and like the senior stu- Emil Du Bois-Reymond and Carl Ludwig. research attempting to learn how nerve cells dent, he presents Müller as the man who Translated by Sabine Lichtner-Ayed. exchange signals. She earned an M.A. in neu- articulated questions he went on to Edited by Paul F. Cranefield. Baltimore: roscience, but she also discovered an affinity answer. Recalling his conversation with Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. for literature and philosophy. Finkelstein, Gabriel. Emil Du Bois-Reymond: Müller 50 years after the fact, Haeckel The Making of a Liberal German Scientist constructs Müller as a character in his As a result, Professor Otis shifted her focus from (1818-1851). Ph.D. diss. Princeton neuroscience to comparative literature. She memory: an aging scientist fascinated University, 1996. earned both an M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative and tormented by an elusive order. Haberling, Wilhelm. Johannes Müller: Das literature from Cornell University. Her disserta- In the “science wars” of the 1990s, Leben des Rheinischen Naturforschers. tion received the Messenger Chalmers Prize for social historians argued with scientists Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, the best dissertation in the humanities from about how much truth science actually 1924. Cornell in 1991. contains. Scholars studying language and Haeckel, Ernst. Der Kampf um den culture insisted that science holds true Entwickelungsgedanken. Berlin: Reimer, 1905. Professor Otis attempts to open new channels only in the context of the society that cre- Holmes, Frederic L. “The Role of Johannes of communication between people studying lit- Müller in the Formation of Helmholtz’s erature and science. She compares the meth- ated it. Scientists protested that gravity ods with which scientific and creative writers and menstruation are real, not constructs Physiological Career.” In Universalgenie Helmholtz: Rückblick nach 100 Jahren. approach common issues. In the classroom, of language. My exploration of Müller’s Professor Otis encourages students of literature Edited by Lorenz Krüger. Berlin: and science to appreciate each other’s goals relationship with his students has shown Akademie Verlag, 1994. me that literary analyses of science need and methods. Her objective is to discourage Jardine, Nicholas. “The Mantle of Müller notions of “literature and science types” by ini- not deny any of the physical reality of the and the Ghost of Goethe: Interactions experiments performed. Since the work tiating dialogues among students from different Between the Sciences and Their fields. in question was carried out more than Histories.” In History and the Disciplines: 150 years ago, our access to it comes only The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Professor Otis has written extensively on this through articles, letters and laboratory Modern Europe. Edited by Donald R. subject matter. Her first book, Organic Memory: notebooks that can be analyzed with Kelley. Rochester: The University of History and the Body in the Late Nineteenth and some of the techniques used to study lit- Rochester Press, 1997. Early Twentieth Centuries (University of erary texts. Studying Müller’s students’ Koller, Gottfried. Das Leben des Biologen Nebraska Press, 1994), explores a misleading motivations for writing, their sense of Johannes Müller 1801-58. Stuttgart: idea that people can inherit their ancestors’ Wissenschaftsverlaggesellschaft, 1958. memories. Her second book, Membranes: audience, their narrative strategies, and Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century their creations of personae can help us to Kornmilch, Ernst Ekkehard. “Johannes Müller und Ernst Haeckel.” Zeitschrift für Literature, Science, and Politics (Johns Hopkins understand their science. By applying lit- ärztliche Vorbildung 81 (1987): 861-63. University Press, 1998), examines people’s erary techniques to the history of science, Krausse, Erika. “Johannes Müller und Ernst need for boundaries, or “membranes,” in con- I would like to show how interpretive Haeckel: Erfahrung und Erkenntnis.” In structing their notions of identity. Her latest strategies from different fields can work Johannes Müller und die Philosophie. book, Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines (University of Michigan Press, together to produce knowledge. The Edited by Michael Hagner and Bettina knowledge I am after is how scientific 2001) is an interdisciplinary study that traces Wahrig-Schmidt. Berlin: Akademie contemporary notions of “the Web” to their ori- ideas arise: how personal relationships, Verlag, 1992. gins long before the Internet came into being. everyday annoyances, and working con- LaClos, Choderlos de. Les Liaisons In addition, she has recently translated Spanish ditions influence the questions that sci- Dangereuses. [1782]. Paris: Librairie neurobiologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s entists decide to ask. And I do believe Générale Française, 1987. Vacation Stories into English. there is knowledge to be found. Human Steudel, Johannes. “Wissenschaftslehre und conflicts and unreliable equipment do Forschungsmethodik Johannes Müllers.” Professor Otis has received numerous fellow- not contaminate the truth. They are Deutsche medizinsche Wochenschrift 77 ships and awards based on her research. In always a part of the story. (1952): 115-18. 2000 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her interdisciplinary studies of the nervous system.-SK

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