Ernst Fleischl von Marxow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ernst Fleischl von Marxow
Bas-relief (bronze) by Ernst Fleischl von Marxow in the arcade courtyard of the University of Vienna

Ernst Fleischl Edler von Marxow (born August 5, 1846 in Vienna ; † October 22, 1891 ibid) was an Austrian physiologist and inventor.

Life

Ernst Fleischl Edler von Marxow was the son of the merchant, banker and stock exchange counselor Karl Fleischl (1818-1893), who was raised to the hereditary Austrian nobility in 1875 as "Edler von Marxow" , and his wife, the writer and salonier Ida Fleischl von Marxow (née Marx), first studied mathematics, physics and chemistry, then medicine at the universities of the University of Vienna and Leipzig . In 1870 he was promoted to Dr. med. and was initially - as during his studies - assistant to Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke , then prosector at the Anatomical Institute and assistant to Carl von Rokitansky. During an autopsy, his hand was infected with corpse poison and one thumb had to be amputated. As a result, he suffered lifelong from painful neuromas in the amputation stump, which his close friend Sigmund Freud tried to treat with cocaine from 1884 . The addictive effect was only discovered in the course of treatment; the long-term effects of this injury were then also the cause of his death.

Fleischl-Marxow turned to nerve and muscle physiology after his accident and was assistant to Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig in Leipzig in 1872 , after his return to Vienna in 1873 again to Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, where he qualified as a lecturer. In 1880 he became an associate professor for physiology at the University of Vienna . In 1884 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

He dealt with circulatory problems and made contributions to nerve and muscle physiology as well as to physical and physiological optics. He constructed several measuring devices, improved the capillary electrometer developed by Gabriel Lippmann in 1872 and invented the hemometer . He reported on the 1876 ​​World's Fair in Philadelphia. In 1883 he succeeded in deriving the electrical brain activity for the first time via the scalp, thus creating an essential prerequisite for electroencephalography .

Sigmund Freud wrote on June 27, 1882 in a love letter to his fiancée Martha about Fleischl-Marxow:

“Yesterday I went to see my friend Ernst von Fleischl, whom I have envied in every respect as long as I didn't know Marthchen. Now I have something ahead of me. I think he's been engaged to a girl of his age for ten or twelve years, who wanted to wait an indefinitely long time for him, and with whom he fell apart for reasons unknown to me. He is an excellent person, on whom nature and upbringing have done their best. Rich, trained in all physical exercises, with the stamp of genius in his energetic features, beautiful, subtle, gifted with all talents and able to draw an original judgment in most things, he was always my ideal, and I was calm at first, when we became friends and I was able to take pure pleasure in his ability and quality. This time I brought him a verdict on a polemic from him, he taught me the Japanese game 'Go' and surprised me with the news that he was learning Sanskrit. "

Honors

Publications

  • About the structure of the so-called thyroid gland, the frog . Session reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Vienna 1868.
  • A gap in Kant's philosophy and Eduard von Hartmann . Rösner, Vienna 1872.
  • Investigation into the laws of nerve excitation . Session reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Vienna 1875–80.
  • The double refraction of light in liquids . Vienna 1884.
  • The deformation of the light wave surface in the magnetic field . Vienna 1885.
  • Communication concerning the physiology of the cerebral cortex . Zentralblatt Physiologie, 1890
  • Entire treatises . Edited by Otto Fleischl von Marxow. With a bibliographic sketch by Sigmund Exner . Barth, Leipzig / Vienna 1893.

literature

  • Hans-Peter Medwed: Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (1846-1891). Life and work . Medienverlag Köhler, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-932694-02-3 (also dissertation at the University of Tübingen).
Lexica entries

Web links

Commons : Ernst Fleischl von Marxow  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Gaugusch : Who once was. The upper Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna 1800–1938 . Volume 2: L-R . Amalthea, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-85002-773-1 , pp. 1674 and 1688.
  2. ^ Mitchell G. Ash, Josef Ehmer: University - Politics - Society . Vienna University Press, June 17, 2015, ISBN 978-3-8470-0413-4 , p. 118.
personal data
SURNAME Fleischl von Marxow, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fleischl-Marxov, Ernst von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1891
Place of death Vienna