Georgius Prochaska : a pioneer in modern physiology (1749-1820) / V. Kruta.

  • Kruta, Vladislav.
Date:
[1943]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Georgius Prochaska : a pioneer in modern physiology (1749-1820) / V. Kruta. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    If he did not actually discover this most important pheno¬ menon, he has at least the merit of having- foreshadowed it, and having prepared the way for his more fortunate followers. But his contribution to the understanding of the nervous system—“the most important of all organs in the animal economy”—did not end with his anatomical study, and, as with his work on blood supply, the anatomical re¬ search was followed by physiological studies, experiments and conceptions. He carried out this work at Prague—he went there in 1778, the year De structura nervorum was pub¬ lished—and probably found there more interest in these problems, as his predecessor KLINKOSCH with his colla¬ borators (1RZEBICZKY, GRUBER) had been engaged in studies of irritability and sensibility raised by the work of HALLER. Six years later he published the results in his most important and best known treatise Commentatio de functionibus systematis nervosi included in the third part of his Adnotationaruni academicarum (Prague, 1784), where he formulates his general conception of nervous activity including the theory of reflex action. This little book is a real masterpiece, remarkable for its clarity of style and systematic presentation of all the then known material, which is analysed and discussed in a true scientific spirit, quite exceptional and outstanding in the contemporary nervous physiology. It is true that many fundamental facts con¬ cerning the reflex action had been already established and that several theories of the nervous reflexion had been for¬ mulated by his predecessors (DESCARTES, WILLIS, WHYTT, UNZER and others). It is equally true that Prochaska in his own experimental work did not make a distinctive original contribution to the reflex theory. That could hardly be expected; his formation and the method of his work were those of an anatomist, not in the line of experi¬ mental work, as it developed in the later generation and characterised the 19th century as a period of great dis¬ coveries in physiology. But his logic was that of a physio- logist,. and we can say that at that time an unprejudiced analysis and discussion of the known facts was more needed than new experimental facts, which could not have been properly interpreted without the former. We see indeed that the current doctrines of nervous physiology were still influenced—if not dominated—by the ideas of the mysterious nervous fluid and animal spirits, in spite of serious objections and doubts raised by a few rational minds. Prochaska, who thoroughly mastered the contemporary knowledge, was very sceptical about these and other conjectures and hvpo- t.heses a priori, which could not be tested by experiments,