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Hospital Neuropsiquiátrico "Dr. José Tiburcio
Borda"
Laboratorio de
Investigaciones Electroneurobiológicas
y Revista
Electroneurobiología
ISSN: 0328-0446
The
Political Structure of the Brain:
Cerebral Localization
in
Bismarckian
Philip
J. Pauly
Department of History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick,
NJ 08903
Correspondencia /
Contact: pauly[-at–]rci.rutgers.edu
Electroneurobiología
vol. 14 (1), pp. 25-32, 2005;
URL http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/Brain's_political_structure.htm
Copyright © 2005 del autor / by the
author. A previous version of the present article has been published by The International Journal of Neuroscience
21 (1-2), pp. 145-9, in October 1983.
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ABSTRACT: Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch's experimental
"demonstration" of cerebral localization in 1870 was a major event in
the history of attempts to relate behavior to the central nervous system. Their
work transformed the vague speculations that began with Franz Josef Gall into
professionally responsible activity. In Germany the work of Hitzig and his
followers led to violent controversies concerning both the observations and
interpretations of cerebral localization. This paper considers why German
scientists, who had universally opposed the work of British and French
localizers up to 1870, suddenly became interested in the subject at this time,
and also why the issue of cerebral localization evoked such passion within the
German scientific community. Adequate answers to these questions must involve
consideration of the professional relations between physiologists and the
developing field of psychiatry. They must also include discussion of the
reactions of scientific intellectuals to the most important political
development of the time, namely, the unification of Germany.
RESUMEN: La
"demostración" experimental de localizaciones cerebrales, lograda por
Eduardo Hitzig y Gustavo Fritsch en 1870, constituyó un acontecimiento de
primera magnitud en la historia de los intentos por relacionar comportamientos
con sistema nervioso central. Su labor transformó las inciertas especulaciones
que habían comenzado con Francisco José Gall en una actividad profesionalmente
responsable. En Alemania el trabajo de Hitzig y sus continuadores llevó a
violentas controversias tanto respecto a las observaciones cuanto a las
interpretacions de la localización cerebral. La presente investigación
considera por qué los científicos germanos, que se habían opuesto universalmente
al trabajo de los localizadores británicos y franceses hasta 1870, en ese
momento pasaron bruscamente a interesarse en el asunto; y, asimismo, por qué la
cuestión de la localización cerebral despertó semejante pasión en la comunidad
científica germana. Las respuestas adecuadas para estos interrogantes tienen
que incluir la consideración de las relaciones profesionales entre los
fisiólogos y el campo de la psiquiatría en desarrollo. Deben también incluir el
estudio de las reacciones de los intelectuales activos en las ciencias al más
importante giro político del momento: la unificación de Alemania.
-------------
In 1870 Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch
announced their discovery of the excitability of the cerebral cortex. More
importantly, they also claimed that within the cortex there were anatomically
well-defined centers directing the motions of different body parts. Over the
next twenty years, the controversies in Germany over this issue of cerebral
localization were so violent that William James (1890, 1:46) commented that
"the subject of localization of functions in the brain seems to have a
peculiar effect on the temper of those who cultivate it experimentally."
Experimenters produced a mass of obscure and contradictory observations; while
positions overlapped on individual issues, there was a sharp line between
localizers and their opponents. The one side emphasized boundaries, order, and
the regularity of brain function; the other stressed compensation, adaptation,
cooperation, and the activity of the organism as a whole.
This paper considers why German interest in
cerebral localization began so suddenly in 1870, and why the topic aroused
such passion. The controversialists themselves emphasized differences in
technique. The rapid growth of biomedical research in Germany after 1850, and
the general contentiousness of the German academic system, are also relevant
themes. Recent work in the history of neurophysiology, however, has opened up
another possibility. A number of scholars (Young, 1970; Geison, 1978; Shapin,
1979) have discussed the broad political implications that neurological
theories had throughout the 19th century, and there has been particular
interest in the relation between the English phrenological debates of the early
part of the century and social and political issues. What follows is a brief
exploration of the political implications of the "new phrenology," as
it was sometimes called, in the rather different context of Bismarckian
Germany. There the issue of cerebral localization was closely tied to contemporary
tensions regarding the political and social role of the middle class
intellectual elite. Antilocalizers tended to be in "pure" scientific
disciplines such as physiology, and identified themselves with Kultur, the spiritual bond they felt
united the true Germany. Most localizers, on the other hand, were clinical
professionals (largely in the field of psychiatry) who saw themselves as part
of the highly structured bureaucracy of the new Reich, established under Prussian domination in 1871. This contrast
will be developed through examination of the social backgrounds, intellectual
interests, and professional aims of the two leading antagonists in the cerebral
localization debates, Eduard Hitzig and Friedrich Goltz. While the positions
were extreme, they represent ideal types against which others involved can be
compared.
Although ethnically Jewish, Eduard Hitzig
(1838-1907) was, as his obituarist noted, the quintessential arrogant Prussian
(Wollenberg, 1908; see also Clarke, 1972). He grew up in a Berlin household
deeply involved in the construction of the visible Prussian state. His
grandfather Julius Hitzig, who converted to Christianity in 1799, worked to
develop the Prussian criminal code in the 1830s. His father, who became
president of the Royal Academy of Arts, was one of the major architects of
Imperial Berlin, designing the Reichstag,
Reichsbank, Bourse, and many houses
for the new urban upper classes. Eduard Hitzig received an M.D. from the
University of Berlin in 1862, and took advantage of the recent opening of army
medical practice to university graduates by becoming physician to the Berlin
garrison hospital. His involvement with the army bureaucracy led him to his
discovery. In 1867 he developed apparatus to generate constant
electrotherapeutic currents of over 100 volts, and tested these heroic methods
on his hospital patients (Hitzig, 1867, 1869). On one occasion currents sent
through the skull of a patient produced involuntary eye movements, leading Hitzig
to ask whether the stimuli were central or peripheral, and thus to test the
excitability of the cortex (Hitzig, 1904, 1:14). With the help of the anatomist
Gustav Fritsch he instituted experiments on dogs, and they were able to
demonstrate (1870) that electrical stimulation of different cortical areas led
to distinct motor responses. Further results were delayed because Hitzig soon
left Berlin to serve at the seige of Nancy in the FrancoPrussian War, for
which he received an Iron Cross.
Hitzig's thinking was permeated with Prussian
bureaucratic concepts. He was never so open as his partner Fritsch, who
compared the motor center directly to a government minister, and claimed
(1884) that compensation after removal of a center was similar to continuation of
the bureaucracy's work when the minister was on vacation. But neural
organization from Hitzig's standpoint was almost identical to the organization
of the bureaucracy. His model of the nervous system involved sharp divisions of
authority, both vertically from the center of abstract thought in the frontal
lobes, to the motor centers, to the efferent nerves; and horizontally, with
well marked topographical divisions of responsibility among the various motor
centers, or, as he called them, "provinces." (Hitzig, 1886; Hitzig,
1904, 1: 36-62, 114-158, 230-237). His strongest attack (1887, p. 129) was to
brand his opponent (in this case Goltz's student Jacques Loeb) "an apostle
of lawlessness," someone who would subvert the order that cerebral localization
had established.
Localization both represented bureaucratic
order and was a means for promoting that order in concrete ways. It gave
crucial support to the argument that mental illnesses were diseases of the
brain, thereby bringing insanity more firmly within the boundaries of medicine.
Men trained in anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the brain were able to
claim authority over the new professorships of psychiatry and the growing
complex of mental institutions. Hitzig was appointed director of the Burgholzli
Cantonal Asylum and professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich in 1875
(Ackerknecht, 1978). His fight against the democratic cantonal government to
put complete control of the asylum under the medical director resulted in
political uproar and libel suits, and he returned to the more orderly Germany
as professor of psychiatry and clinic director at the University of Halle.
Declining to move to Austria-Hungary to replace Theodor Meynert, he remained at
Halle to exert a major influence on German psychiatry to the end of the
century.
Friedrich Goltz (1834-1902), the major German
opponent of localization, had sharply contrasting social origins, intellectual
aims, and professional interests. Goltz was born not in Berlin but in the town
of Poznan (Posen), and grew up in an area where German, Polish, Jewish, and
Russian influences intermingled (Ewald, 1903; Rothschuh, 1972). The strongest
influence on his early years was his uncle Bogumil, a well known popular writer
and cultural nationalist. Bogumil Goltz's Die
Deutschen (1860) emphasized that one of the greatest advantages the Germans
had over other peoples such as the French was that Germany was culturally
united but politically fragmented, and therefore the German sense of nationhood
was not distorted by the unfortunate aggressiveness and worldliness of the
modern state.
Friedrich Goltz studied anatomy and physiology
at Konigsberg with Hermann Helmholtz. However, he soon rejected the
physicalistic reductionism of the Berlin "school" of physiology, and
even more their reliance on delicate and complex instrumentation, in favor of
simple observations and experiments in the tradition of Johannes Mueller. Goltz
established himself within the physiology profession in the 1860s with studies
on the "adaptive capacities" of decerebrated frogs (Goltz, 1869),
emphasizing that the behavior of such organisms was much more complex than a
mere combination of reflexes.
In 1872 Goltz became professor of physiology
at the new University of Strasbourg (Strassburg), created as part of Bismarck's
campaign to Germanify the new province of Alsace that had been acquired in the
recent war with France (Craig, 1972, pp. 209-221, 379-393). Along with the
other Strasbourg professors, Goltz saw himself as a missionary of German Kultur (Goltz, 1888). The example
university professors would provide through their devotion to scholarship would
gradually impress upon the Alsatians the excellence of their
"original" German heritage; at the same time the meaning of
Germanness itself would be broadened through incorporation of the local and
French traditions. The professors believed that the initial antagonism of the
Alsatians towards the radical political change of 1870 would gradually fade as
time passed and an atmosphere of cooperation took its place. The major obstacle
to this, in the opinion of Goltz and his colleagues, was the direct political
and military control being exercised over the area by Berlin, and even more the
"Kommando-ton" and
overbearing attitude of the Prussian bureaucrats (Waldeyer-Hartz, 1921, p. 170;
Craig, 1972, pp. 379-393). Goltz's Strasbourg experience thus strongly
reinforced a number of his earlier convictions: the importance of cooperation
among ethnic groups, his allegiance to physiology as a pure science, the
separation between culture and political power that his uncle had emphasized,
and the provincial's resentment of central bureaucratic interference. It is not
surprising that, as Goltz pursued research in brain physiology, he began to
oppose the localization concepts of Hitzig, Fritsch, and other Berliners such
as Hermann Munk.
Goltz considered Hitzig's demonstration of
cortical excitability interesting but behaviorally irrelevant, and argued that
motor defects in the immediate aftermath of ablations were merely due to
trauma. Only the permanent results of ablations were significant for
understanding the normal functions of the cortex. While large ablations of both
hemispheres in dogs produced visual disturbances, general sensory weakness, and
lowering of intelligence, there was never the total paralysis one would expect
if a real "controlling center" had been removed (1881, pp. 1, 75-128,
159-173). Goltz recognized that his results were less certain and more variable
than the well-defined claims of localizers, but felt the complexity of life
should not be oversimplified. He compared cerebral localization charts to the
arbitrary boundaries among the old German states, and argued that such sharp
"political" boundaries could not apply to a living entity like the
brain (1881, p. 102; 1885, p. 372). The closest analogy in his view would be a
map of vegetation (or, though he did not say so, of European nationalities),
where populations overlapped and the dominant character changed only gradually.
What was important was the extent of adaptability and accommodation, and the insignificance
of boundaries.
While there was no experimentum crucis, localization held the field as the debate
wound down around 1890. The law and order evident in localization theory had
greater appeal to the German medical audience than Goltz's emphasis on
cooperation. More specifically, however, Goltz had little positive to offer to
physicians; in the face of localization theory's promises of definite
diagnoses, Goltz appeared to be a carping critic who held back progress and
undermined the authority of the medical profession (Ewald, 1903, p. 14). His
experimental program was not developed further until the work of Karl Lashley
(1929), in the very different context of American academic psychology.
For German intellectuals the Bismarckian era
was a period of rapid change. Unification through military force seemed to
alter the relative positions of culture and power as national characteristics.
Industrialization brought social dislocation and the perceived Marxist threat
to law and order. University graduates were taking on new professional roles
within the bureaucratic system. Hitzig and Goltz represent two types of
reaction to these changes. While Hitzig was in the vanguard of nationalistic
and bureaucratizing tendencies, Goltz sought to mitigate nationalism and to
maintain older cultural ideas. Their concepts of brain function reflected this
division; and in part at least, their debate was about politics. Not all
Germans concerned with brain physiology had interests and attitudes as sharply
defined as those of Hitzig and Goltz. But the polarity described above provides
a framework for examining the attitudes of other figures toward localization,
and more generally for studying the interconnections between physiological and
political thinking in late 19th century Germany.
References
Ackerknecht, E. A.,
"Gudden, Huguenin, Hitzig. Hirnpsychiatrie im Burgholzli 1869-1879." Gesnerus, 1978, 35, 66-78.
Clarke, E., (Julius),
"Eduard Hitzig." In: Dictionary
of Scientific Biography, (Vol. 14). New York: Scribner's, 1972.
Craig, J. E., "A
Mission for German Learning: The University of Strasbourg and Alsatian Society,
1870-1918." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1972.
Ewald, J. R., "Friedrich
Goltz." Pfluegers Archiv, 1903, 94, 1-64.
Fritsch, G., "Herrn
Prof. Goltz's Feldzug gegen die Grosshirnlocalisation nach Berlin." Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1884, 21, 299-301.
Fritsch, G. & Hitzig,
E., "On the electrical excitability of the cerebrum" (1870). In G.
von Bonin, transl., Some papers on the
cerebral cortex. Springfield, Illinois: Thomas, 1960.
Geison, G. L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge school of
physiology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Goltz, B., Die Deutschen (2 vols.). Berlin, 1860.
Goltz, F. L., Beitrage zur Lehre von den Functionen der
Nervencentren des Frosches. Berlin, 1869.
Goltz, F. L., Ueber die Verrichtungen des Grosshirns:
Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Bonn, 1881.
Goltz, F. L., "Ueber
die moderne Phrenologie." Deutsche
Rundschau, 1885, 45, 263-283, 361-375.
Goltz, F. L., Rede zur Gedenkfeier des verewigten Stifters
der Universitat weiland Seiner Majestat Kaiser Wilhelms. Strasbourg, 1888.
Hitzig. E., "Ueber die
Anwendung unpolarisirbarer Elektroden in Elektrotherapie." Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1867, 4, 404-406.
[Hitzig, E.],
"Verhandlungen arztlichen Gesellschaften." Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1869, 6, 420.
Hitzig, E., Von den Materiellen der Seele. Vortrag
gehalten im Frauen-Verein zur Armen- and Krankenpflege zu Halle a. S. am 25
Marz 1886. Leipzig, 1886.
Hitzig, E.,
"Erwiderung dem Herrn Professor Zuntz." Pfluegers Archiv, 1887, 40,
128-136.
Hitzig, E., Physiologische und klinische Untersuchungen
ueber das Gehirn: Gesammelte Abhandlungen (2 vols.). Berlin, 1904.
James, W., The principles of psychology (2 vols.)
[New York, 1890]. New York: Dover Publications, 1950.
Lashley, K. S., Brain mechanisms and intelligence.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929.
Rothschuh, K. E.,
"Friedrich Leopold Goltz". In: Dictionary
of scientific biography (Vol. 14). New York: Scribner's, 1972.
Shapin, S., "The
politics of observation: Cerebral anatomy and social interests in the Edinburgh
phrenology disputes." In: Roy Wallis, ed., On the margins of science, Sociological Review Monograph No. 27,
1979.
Waldeyer-Hartz, W. von, Lebenserinnerungen. Bonn: Friedrich
Cohen, 1921.
Wollenberg, R. Eduard
Hitzig. Archiv fur Psychiatrie and
Nervenkrankheiten, 1908, 43,
iii-xv.
Young, R. M. Mind, brain, and adaptation in the
nineteenth century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
------------------------------
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SOCIOLOGÍA
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Why is Time Frame-dependent in
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unremitting mode of existence, because, if the world described by relativity
were three-dimensional, the kinematic consequences of special relativity and
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“ANTAGONISMO ENTRE
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NUESTRA GENTE
Reseña biográfica: Ramón Carrillo, el Gran Sanitarista
Argentino (Spanish)