A History of Science, vol 4 - Henry Smith Williams (epub e ink reader .txt) 📗
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hardly have been imagined when the Proutian hypothesis, was
formulated, through the tradition of a novel weapon to the
armamentarium of the chemist—the spectroscope. The perfection
of this instrument, in the hands of two German scientists, Gustav
Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, came about through
the investigation, towards the middle of the century, of the
meaning of the dark lines which had been observed in the solar
spectrum by Fraunhofer as early as 1815, and by Wollaston a
decade earlier. It was suspected by Stokes and by Fox Talbot in
England, but first brought to demonstration by Kirchhoff and
Bunsen, that these lines, which were known to occupy definite
positions in the spectrum, are really indicative of particular
elementary substances. By means of the spectroscope, which is
essentially a magnifying lens attached to a prism of glass, it is
possible to locate the lines with great accuracy, and it was soon
shown that here was a new means of chemical analysis of the most
exquisite delicacy. It was found, for example, that the
spectroscope could detect the presence of a quantity of sodium so
infinitesimal as the one two-hundred-thousandth of a grain. But
what was even more important, the spectroscope put no limit upon
the distance of location of the substance it tested, provided
only that sufficient light came from it. The experiments it
recorded might be performed in the sun, or in the most distant
stars or nebulae; indeed, one of the earliest feats of the
instrument was to wrench from the sun the secret of his chemical
constitution.
To render the utility of the spectroscope complete, however, it
was necessary to link with it another new chemical
agency—namely, photography. This now familiar process is based
on the property of light to decompose certain unstable compounds
of silver, and thus alter their chemical composition. Davy and
Wedgwood barely escaped the discovery of the value of the
photographic method early in the nineteenth century. Their
successors quite overlooked it until about 1826, when Louis J. M.
Daguerre, the French chemist, took the matter in hand, and after
many years of experimentation brought it to relative perfection
in 1839, in which year the famous daguerreotype first brought the
matter to popular attention. In the same year Mr. Fox Talbot read
a paper on the subject before the Royal Society, and soon
afterwards the efforts of Herschel and numerous other natural
philosophers contributed to the advancement of the new method.
In 1843 Dr. John W. Draper, the famous English-American chemist
and physiologist, showed that by photography the Fraunhofer lines
in the solar spectrum might be mapped with absolute accuracy;
also proving that the silvered film revealed many lines invisible
to the unaided eye. The value of this method of observation was
recognized at once, and, as soon as the spectroscope was
perfected, the photographic method, in conjunction with its use,
became invaluable to the chemist. By this means comparisons of
spectra may be made with a degree of accuracy not otherwise
obtainable; and, in case of the stars, whole clusters of spectra
may be placed on record at a single observation.
As the examination of the sun and stars proceeded, chemists were
amazed or delighted, according to their various preconceptions,
to witness the proof that many familiar terrestrial elements are
to be found in the celestial bodies. But what perhaps surprised
them most was to observe the enormous preponderance in the
sidereal bodies of the element hydrogen. Not only are there vast
quantities of this element in the sun’s atmosphere, but some
other suns appeared to show hydrogen lines almost exclusively in
their spectra. Presently it appeared that the stars of which
this is true are those white stars, such as Sirius, which had
been conjectured to be the hottest; whereas stars that are only
red-hot, like our sun, show also the vapors of many other
elements, including iron and other metals.
In 1878 Professor J. Norman Lockyer, in a paper before the Royal
Society, called attention to the possible significance of this
series of observations. He urged that the fact of the sun showing
fewer elements than are observed here on the cool earth, while
stars much hotter than the sun show chiefly one element, and that
one hydrogen, the lightest of known elements, seemed to give
color to the possibility that our alleged elements are really
compounds, which at the temperature of the hottest stars may be
decomposed into hydrogen, the latter “element” itself being also
doubtless a compound, which might be resolved under yet more
trying conditions.
Here, then, was what might be termed direct experimental evidence
for the hypothesis of Prout. Unfortunately, however, it is
evidence of a kind which only a few experts are competent to
discuss—so very delicate a matter is the spectral analysis of
the stars. What is still more unfortunate, the experts do not
agree among themselves as to the validity of Professor Lockyer’s
conclusions. Some, like Professor Crookes, have accepted them
with acclaim, hailing Lockyer as “the Darwin of the inorganic
world,” while others have sought a different explanation of the
facts he brings forward. As yet it cannot be said that the
controversy has been brought to final settlement. Still, it is
hardly to be doubted that now, since the periodic law has seemed
to join hands with the spectroscope, a belief in the compound
nature of the so-called elements is rapidly gaining ground among
chemists. More and more general becomes the belief that the
Daltonian atom is really a compound radical, and that back of the
seeming diversity of the alleged elements is a single form of
primordial matter. Indeed, in very recent months, direct
experimental evidence for this view has at last come to hand,
through the study of radio-active substances. In a later chapter
we shall have occasion to inquire how this came about.
IV. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
ALBRECHT VON HALLERAn epoch in physiology was made in the eighteenth century by the
genius and efforts of Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), of Berne,
who is perhaps as worthy of the title “The Great” as any
philosopher who has been so christened by his contemporaries
since the time of Hippocrates. Celebrated as a physician, he was
proficient in various fields, being equally famed in his own time
as poet, botanist, and statesman, and dividing his attention
between art and science.
As a child Haller was so sickly that he was unable to amuse
himself with the sports and games common to boys of his age, and
so passed most of his time poring over books. When ten years of
age he began writing poems in Latin and German, and at fifteen
entered the University of Tubingen. At seventeen he wrote
learned articles in opposition to certain accepted doctrines, and
at nineteen he received his degree of doctor. Soon after this he
visited England, where his zeal in dissecting brought him under
suspicion of grave-robbery, which suspicion made it expedient for
him to return to the Continent. After studying botany in Basel
for some time he made an extended botanical journey through
Switzerland, finally settling in his native city, Berne, as a
practising physician. During this time he did not neglect either
poetry or botany, publishing anonymously a collection of poems.
In 1736 he was called to Gottingen as professor of anatomy,
surgery, chemistry, and botany. During his labors in the
university he never neglected his literary work, sometimes living
and sleeping for days and nights together in his library, eating
his meals while delving in his books, and sleeping only when
actually compelled to do so by fatigue. During all this time he
was in correspondence with savants from all over the world, and
it is said of him that he never left a letter of any kind
unanswered.
Haller’s greatest contribution to medical science was his famous
doctrine of irritability, which has given him the name of “father
of modern nervous physiology,” just as Harvey is called “the
father of the modern physiology of the blood.” It has been said
of this famous doctrine of irritability that “it moved all the
minds of the century—and not in the departments of medicine
alone—in a way of which we of the present day have no
satisfactory conception, unless we compare it with our modern
Darwinism.”[1]
The principle of general irritability had been laid down by
Francis Glisson (1597-1677) from deductive studies, but Haller
proved by experiments along the line of inductive methods that
this irritability was not common to all “fibre as well as to the
fluids of the body,” but something entirely special, and peculiar
only to muscular substance. He distinguished between irritability
of muscles and sensibility of nerves. In 1747 he gave as the
three forces that produce muscular movements: elasticity, or
“dead nervous force”; irritability, or “innate nervous force”;
and nervous force in itself. And in 1752 he described one
hundred and ninety experiments for determining what parts of the
body possess “irritability”—that is, the property of contracting
when stimulated. His conclusion that this irritability exists in
muscular substance alone and is quite independent of the nerves
proceeding to it aroused a controversy that was never definitely
settled until late in the nineteenth century, when Haller’s
theory was found to be entirely correct.
It was in pursuit of experiments to establish his theory of
irritability that Haller made his chief discoveries in embryology
and development. He proved that in the process of incubation of
the egg the first trace of the heart of the chick shows itself in
the thirty-eighth hour, and that the first trace of red blood
showed in the forty-first hour. By his investigations upon the
lower animals he attempted to confirm the theory that since the
creation of genus every individual is derived from a preceding
individual—the existing theory of preformation, in which he
believed, and which taught that “every individual is fully and
completely preformed in the germ, simply growing from microscopic
to visible proportions, without developing any new parts.”
In physiology, besides his studies of the nervous system, Haller
studied the mechanism of respiration, refuting the teachings of
Hamberger (1697-1755), who maintained that the lungs contract
independently. Haller, however, in common with his
contemporaries, failed utterly to understand the true function of
the lungs. The great physiologist’s influence upon practical
medicine, while most profound, was largely indirect. He was a
theoretical rather than a practical physician, yet he is credited
with being the first physician to use the watch in counting the
pulse.
BATTISTA MORGAGNI AND MORBID ANATOMYA great contemporary of Haller was Giovanni Battista Morgagni
(1682-1771), who pursued what Sydenham had neglected, the
investigation in anatomy, thus supplying a necessary counterpart
to the great Englishman’s work. Morgagni’s investigations were
directed chiefly to the study of morbid anatomy—the study of the
structure of diseased tissue, both during life and post mortem,
in contrast to the normal anatomical structures. This work cannot
be said to have originated with him; for as early as 1679 Bonnet
had made similar, although less extensive, studies; and later
many investigators, such as Lancisi and Haller, had made
post-mortem studies. But Morgagni’s De sedibus et causis
morborum per anatomen indagatis was the largest, most accurate,
and best-illustrated collection of cases that had ever been
brought together, and marks an epoch in medical science. From the
time of the publication of Morgagni’s researches, morbid anatomy
became a recognized branch of the medical science, and the effect
of the impetus thus given it has been steadily increasing since
that time.
WILLIAM HUNTERWilliam Hunter (1718-1783) must always be remembered as one of
the greatest physicians and anatomists of the eighteenth century,
and particularly as the first great teacher of anatomy in
England; but his fame has been somewhat overshadowed by that of
his younger brother John.
Hunter had
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