Haller

HALLER, Albrecht (Albrecht von Haller, 1708-77), outstanding anatomist and physiologist. Born in Bern, at the age of 15 he entered the medical faculty of the University of Tübingen, but soon transferred to the then-famous University of Leiden, where he worked under the guidance of Albinus and Boerhaave. Two years later, Haller became a doctor of medicine and traveled to London and Paris, where he studied anatomy under Douglas and Winslow. He returned to his homeland and studied mathematics under Bernoulli. He repeatedly undertook trips to the Alps, intensively pursuing

botany. In 1736, he received the professorship of anatomy, surgery, and botany in Göttingen, where he established a botanical garden and an anatomical theater (and at the same time the first physiological institute in Germany). Haller's anatomical works: "Icones anatomicae" (Göttingen, 1743-56), "Bibliotheca anatomica" (Zurich, 1774-77), "Opuscula anatomica minora" (Bern, 1762-68), "Disputationes anatomicae selectae" (Göttingen, 1746-52); physiological: "Primae lineae physiologiae" (Göttingen, 1744). The widely used textbook before the beginning of the 19th century, "Elementa physiologiae corporis humani" (v. I-V, Lausanne, v. VI-VIII, Bern, 1757-66), which initiated the new experimental direction in physiology and the doctrine of irritability ("Irritabilität") and contains the richest material, has not lost its significance to the present day.