Irritating Experiments: Haller's Concept and the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility, 1750-90 (review)

The results of Albrecht von Haller's (1708-77) experimental research on irritability and sensibility were presented to Göttingen's Royal Society of Sciences in 1752 and published in Latin the next year in the transactions of that learned body. Translations in Swedish, French, German, Italian, and English followed in rapid succession, giving rise to numerous experimental investigations and a flood of treatises and pamphlets arguing for or against Haller's classification of the irritable and sensitive parts of the animal body. The controversies provoked by Haller's work had such an impact on the growth of experimental physiology that, ever since Kurt Sprengel's history of medicine (1792-1803), Haller's contribution on the subject has been considered a milestone in medical history and in the history of physiology in particular. Notwithstanding the large amount of historical work carried out in the last 200 years on Haller's conception of irritability and sensibility, Steinke's work breaks new ground while also thoroughly synthesizing acquired knowledge. His book divides into two parts. The first recounts the origin of Haller's notions of irritability and sensibility; the second carefully reconstructs the reception of his 1753 treatise. Contrary to the conventional view, Steinke shows that Haller's concept of irritability had little to do with Glisson's general theory of irritability put forward in 1677. Rather, it was rooted in Boerhaave's later teachings, and especially in the works of five of his pupils who maintained that involuntary movements were caused by innate bodily faculties. Citing manuscript laboratory notes and letters by Haller and some of his students, Steinke documents how animal experiments were conducted in Göttingen in the late 1740s and early 1750s by both Haller and his students while writing their doctoral dissertations, and he stresses the novelty of this practice in the teaching tradition of eighteenth-century German universities. He convincingly shows that Haller's statements on irritability and sensibility did not constitute for Haller himself a theory, but facts: i.e. that his description of muscles as irritable and nerves as sensible was "an experimentally verified physiological fact" (76). After all, Haller's well-known restraint in the overt use of hypotheses and theories sprang from his ideal of physiology, which consisted in statements concerning facts obtained by experiment and observation. For Haller, vivisection was the method to be used in acquiring new knowledge about the workings of the animal body. But Haller changed his notions on irritability and sensibility, as Steinke is able to show through an analysis of all of Haller's works on these topics, from manuscript notes taken while Haller was attending Albinus's private physiological lectures in Leiden in 1727 to the many articles he published in the Encyclopédie of Yverdon (1770-79 ). These changes in Haller's views, however, were not due to the results of his investigations alone; they also resulted from the public controversies provoked by his 1753 treatise. Between this date and Haller's death in 1777 there appeared approximately 120 dissertations and papers dealing largely with Haller's experiments on irritability and sensibility. Steinke provides an impressive reconstruction of the debates between Haller's supporters and opponents, analyzing the different uses of animal experiments, their validation, and the attempts made to introduce standard experimentation. He then discusses the relevance of these debates to medical philosophy (mechanism, animism, and vitalism), pathology, the practice of medicine, and surgery. Finally, he provides an overview of the huge number of summaries and judgments concerning the literature on irritability and sensibility published by the general and professional European journals of the time. The controversy—which concerned facts, methods, and theories—could not be settled, however, and "just withered away" (279). Although Haller's conclusions were not generally accepted by the profession, and thus may not be considered...