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4 SCIENCE ANIMAL ELECTRICITY Whoever has reflected much on the different stages through which our knowledge has successively passed, must, I think, be led to the conclusion, that while fully recognizing the great merit of these investigators of the animal frame, our highest admiration out to be reserved not for those who make the discoveries, but rather for those who point out how the discoveries are to be made. —Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England, 1857 Sometime early in the spring of 1841,Johannes Müller handed Emil du Bois-Reymond a copy of Carlo Matteucci’s latest essay,“On the Electrical Phenomena of Animals,” and asked him to look into it.The topic was ideally suited to Emil’s interests and capabilities —“made for him,” according to Müller. Emil agreed to “repeat, and where possible, further continue” Matteucci’s experiments. The project would occupy him for the remainder of his scientific career.1 Müller may have been lucky in pairing students to their research, but the consistency of his success in finding happy matches suggests more than coincidence. Müller had judged du Bois-Reymond well: animal electricity was a specialty that fit his needs and abilities.It dated back to the discoveries of Luigi Galvani and AlessandroVolta,a heritage that established it as a respectable subject of inquiry, and it cut across two branches of science, a fact that reduced the strain of competition. It also enjoyed a national pedigree. Most of the field’s early researchers were German,and three—Christoph Heinrich Pfaff, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, and the éminence grise of German science, Alexander von Humboldt—had made significant contributions. But interest in the topic had declined since the beginning of the century.The few papers published tended to be in French, and the best that could be said about them was that they were mediocre. It must have rankled du Bois-Reymond to see Paris celebrating Matteucci, an Italian scientist, and 58 CHAPTER 4 a physicist at that, in place of a German one—as du Bois-Reymond put it, to see Prussian civilization upstaged by “that chaotic, violent development from the sad contrasts of a wild and corrupt nobility,a cursed clergy,and a treacherously growling third estate.” In the wake of the storm of indignation that French claims on the Rhine had provoked in the fall of 1840, research in animal electricity took on the tone of an irredentist campaign. Here was scientific land to be reclaimed.2 Animal electricity also offered du Bois-Reymond a field in which he could exercise his interest in theory. He never doubted that his review of Matteucci’s work required experiment, but it would be experiment driven by hypothesis. In this case, the hypothesis was stated at the outset: that electricity governed the action of the nerves. Since few previous experimenters had understood both physics and physiology, du BoisReymond thought he had a chance of proving the conjecture.The achievement would rank with that other mechanical model of identity, the cell theory, and would make his name in science.3 Du Bois-Reymond’s longing to demonstrate his worth grew with his respect for his mentors. He often mentioned Müller and Reichert in his letters to Hallmann, and despite the fiasco of his belladonna study he remained enthusiastic about the prospect of research, having compiled a list of twenty grand questions. In response, his teachers advised him to concentrate on “more fruitful” projects. Since the instrument maker required two weeks to supply a galvanometer, he kept busy reading up on animal electricity and preparing a separate experiment with Reichert.4 Their plan was to use his microscope to observe the process of cleavage in frog embryos. Microscopes were still scarce in Berlin—Müller had had to share his with Schwann—so the fact that du Bois-Reymond could aid Reichert with his own instrument meant that they could double the pace of their research. Competition drove them: Martin Barry, a Scottish physician, had just won the Royal Medal in physiology for embryological work that he had done with Schwann in 1837, and German rivals were publishing, too. Du BoisReymond began work as soon as the weather warmed. Within a few weeks he was able to boast that he had written a 30-page draft of his findings.5 Du Bois-Reymond’s aim was to explain cellular cleavage in terms of Schwann’s theory. He described blastomeres as multipying concentrically, each...

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