Frans Cornelis Donders

FC Donders

Donders statue in Utrecht

Frans Cornelis Donders , also Franciscus Cornelis Donders (born May 27, 1818 in Tilburg in Noord-Brabant , † March 24, 1889 in Utrecht ), was a Dutch physiologist and pioneer in the field of ophthalmology and experimental cognitive psychology .

Life

Frans Donders came from a Catholic family with no scientific ambitions. He was the youngest son of nine children of the merchant Jan Francis Donders (baptized April 30, 1755 in Tilburg; † October 15, 1819 there) and his wife Agnes Elisabeth Clara Hegh (* 1781 in Kleve (Germany); † December 12, 1853 in Tilburg). At the age of seven he was sent to school in the small town of Duizel near Tilburg. Even as a child he stood out for his extraordinary talent, so that at the age of eleven he was able to get a teaching position at the local school and thus saved the cost of boarding. Originally his mother intended to train him as a Catholic priest, but this request was dashed with the Belgian Revolution of 1830. In 1831 Donders switched to the French school in Tilburg and moved from there to the Latin school in Boxmeer . In Boxmeer the young Donders found a lot of free time for walks, fishing, learning languages, collecting various literature and devoting himself to scientific questions.

This moved him to go to the University of Utrecht in 1835 as a pupil of the military doctor school and medical student . Here Nicolaas Cornelis de Fremery , Gerard Moll and Jacobus Ludovicus Conradus Schroeder van der Kolk became his teachers. In 1840 he was promoted to medical officer and garrison doctor in Vlissingen . In the same year on October 13, 1840, he received his doctorate in medicine at the University of Leiden with a dissertation on two cases of meningitis caused by nerve water with the title Dissertatio inauguralis sistens observationes anatomico-pathologicas de centro nervoso . With this work he had already shown that Donders applied anatomy and physiology with great expertise in pathological examination. In 1841 he was transferred to The Hague , where he made a name for himself through publications in the medical journal Boerhaave . At that time he also broadened his knowledge of literature and art.

In 1842, at the age of 24, he became a lecturer in anatomy, histology and physiology at the military medical school in Utrecht. Here, together with Gerardus Johannes Mulder and Pieter Harting, he laid the first foundations for histochemistry (microchemistry) and soon became one of the main collaborators in the theory of the cell as the basic form of all tissues, which had only recently been established by Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jacob Schleiden . He began research on the movement of the human eye, research through which he became a pioneer in ophthalmology. In 1844 he gave a lecture on animal heat, in which he stated that its regulation was not primarily to be sought in the development of heat, but in the cooling of the skin. This lecture, which appeared in print in 1845 and was translated into German in 1847, also contained a perfectly sharp definition of the principle of the conservation of energy.

On October 15, 1847 Donders was appointed associate professor at the University of Utrecht, which task he carried out on January 28, 1848 with the introductory speech De harmonie van het dierlijke leven. De openbaring van wagering (freely translated into German: The harmony of animal life, a revelation of laws ) began. At the Utrecht University he taught forensic medicine, anthropology and hygiene, carried out autopsy sections and set up a laboratory from which numerous examinations emerged. As his student Jakob Moleschott described it, in 1845 he entered a room without furniture, where Donders carried out his investigations into the rotation of the eye. He hung a red ribbon vertically on the wall and watched the movement of the afterimages to see whether the eye simply followed the movements of the head or made one of the independent turns of the wheel. He used little perforated cards and followed the shadow of the lamp, with which he researched the so-called entoptic phenomena, on which he wrote a respected treatise of his time. A tape, a small mirror, a playing card, a microscope, those were the treasures of his laboratory at that time.

In 1851 he traveled to London for three weeks , where he met Albrecht von Graefe and from then on turned increasingly to ophthalmology. On February 3, 1854, he became a full professor of medicine and after the death of his former teacher Schroeder van der Kolk in 1862, he took over the professorship of physiology. How recognized he was is shown by the fact that he was elected rector of the Alma Mater in 1852/53 . He put down this task on March 26, 1853 with the speech Oratio de justa necessitudine scientiam inter artem medicam et utriusque juribus ac matuis officiis .

He also received other honors. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge , Edinburgh , Cordoba , Bologna , 1865 Vienna , on September 25, 1858 in Utrecht and on February 8, 1875 in Leiden (Dr. phil. Nat.). He received the Boerhaave Medal of the Royal Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem, he was a knight and commander of the Order of the Dutch Lion , Second Class Knight of the Nassau House Order of the Golden Lion , 1850 Knight of the Swedish Order of the North Star and received from the Italian King Umberto I. the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy . Donders was a member of learned societies in the Dutch East Indies, Belgium, England, France, Italy, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and North America. In 1851 he became a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences in Amsterdam , where he was chairman of the mathematical and scientific department from 1865 to 1883.

He was also a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences in Paris, a corresponding member of the Académie nationale de Médecine , an extraordinary member of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique , an honorary member of the L'Academie royale de medicine Belgique, a corresponding member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin , corresponding member of the KK Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, external member of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, external member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen , member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1879 ), Honorary Member of the Reale Accademia Medica in Rome, Honorary Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei , Honorary Member of the Budapest Royal Society of Doctors, Member of the Royal Society in London, Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Honorary Member of the Pathological Society in London , corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Medicine in St. Petersburg, honorary member of the Academia reale medica in Rome and co-founder and honorary chairman of the Heidelberg German Ophthalmological Society (Society for Ophthalmology).

plant

His scientific contributions on the eye movements, on the use of cylindrical and prismatic glasses with vision problems, about the accommodation and the distinction of presbyopia by the hyperopia were (farsightedness and presbyopia) pioneering research contributions in the eye . The correction of astigmatism through cylindrical glasses can also be traced back to Donders. As a result, he campaigned for the prescription of glasses to be carried out by ophthalmologists and no longer left to traveling dealers. In 1863 he designed the first tonometer , a device for measuring intraocular pressure. Together with Hermann von Helmholtz and Albrecht von Graefe , Frans Cornelis Donders is considered to be the founder of modern ophthalmology . As a result of his physiological work, the pleural cavity is (now rarely) also known as the “Donders space”, and the negative pressure there (as “intrapleural pressure”) is also referred to as “Donders pressure”.

The “Donders Law” also goes back to him, which characterizes every position of the eye in the orbit by precisely one rotation around the optical axis, which results from the respective horizontal and vertical viewing angle. This torsion is independent of how the respective eyes have reached the respective position. This is how the Donders formula, the Dondors rings and the Donders method are named after him. Donders invented phonocardiography, calculated the duration of the systole, and observed the blood circulation in the brain through a glass window. In 1859 Donders founded the "Nederlandsch Gasthuis voor behoeftigte en minvermogende ooglijders", which he and Herman Snellen turned the eye hospital into a widely famous teaching facility. In addition, according to his information, the physiological laboratory of the Utrecht University was set up in 1866.

He was also a pioneer of mental chronometry , the comparison of cognitive functions by measuring reaction times . He carried out his first experiments on this in 1868. He compared simple reactions (for example, pressing a button when a lamp comes on) with those that required additional mental tasks (for example, pressing a button only when one of five lamps comes on) or a selection (for example, pressing a button when one of five lamps comes on) , with a separate button for each lamp). He found that simple reactions required the least reaction time, which was slowed down with additional mental tasks and took the most time in tasks with choice. His subtraction method was later developed by others.

Donders was a follower of the teachings of Charles Darwin and was in contact with Rudolf Virchow and Albert von Kölliker . From 1845 he edited the medical journal Het Nederlandsch Lancet , of which twelve volumes have appeared. He also contributed some articles to Johannes Peter Müller's Archive for Anatomy and Physiology , to Louis Stromeyer's Journal of Surgery and to Christian Georg Theodor Ruete's Magazine on Ophthalmology . He edited the Dutch contributions to the anatomical and physiological sciences (Düsseldorf and Utrecht 1846–1848), the contributions to the archive for the Dutch contributions to natural and medical science (Utrecht 1858–1864, three volumes), the Ned. Nationaal voor Genees- en Natuurkunde (Utrecht 1865–1869, five volumes) and the Archives for Ophthalmology . After he had reached his seventieth birthday on May 27, 1888, he resigned from his university teaching position according to the legal regulations of the Netherlands, suffered a stroke and died shortly afterwards.

Private

Donders was married twice. His first marriage was on July 24, 1845 in Utrecht with Ernestine Jacoba Adelheid Zimmerman (born February 8, 1819 in Utrecht, † September 30, 1886 in Utrecht), the daughter of the Lutheran pastor Joannes Decker Zimmerman and Frederica Dorothea Fortmeijer. From the marriage comes the daughter Maria Anna Theresia Donders (born August 26, 1846 in Utrecht, † March 3, 1870 in Utrecht) who married Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann on June 15, 1869 . His second marriage was on October 4, 1888 in The Hague with the portrait painter Abrahamina (Bramine) Arnolda Louisa Hubrecht (born July 21, 1855 in Rotterdam, † November 5, 1913 in The Shiffolds (Great Britain)), the daughter of Paul Francois Hubrecht and Maria Pruijs van der Hoeven. This marriage remained childless.

Works (selection)

Blik op de stofwisseling as bron the self-warming van plantsen en deeren. 1845.
Astigmatism en cilindric glaze. Utrecht 1862.
On the abnormalies of accommondation and refraction of the eye. London 1864 (online)
On the rhythm of the sound of the heart. In: Dublin Quart. Med. SC. 89 (1868), p. 225.
De physiology of the spraakklanken. Utrecht 1870.
De vorm, de zamenstelling en de functie der elementaire deelen, in association with the Huns oorsprong. Translated into German: Form, mixture and function of the elementary tissue parts in connection with their genesis.
De snelheid van psychische processesen. Translated into German in 1868: The speed of mental processes. In: Archive Anat. Physiol. Knowledge Med. 1868, pp. 657-681 (online)
The nutrients: basic lines of a general nutrition theory. Krefeld 1853 (online)
Human physiology. Food. Leipzig 1856 (Volume 1, online)
Het vyfentwintigjarig bestaan van het Nederlandsch Gasthuis voor ooglyders. Utrecht 1884.
Albrecht von Graefe and the presentation of the Graefe Medal to Hermann von Helmholtz. Speech at the festive meeting of the Ophthalmic Society in the auditorium of the Heidelberg University on August 9, 1886. Rostock 1886.

literature

S. Duke-Elder : Franciscus Cornelis Donders. In: Br J Ophthalmol. 1959 Feb. 43 (2), pp. 65-68. PMID 13628947
Barend Joseph Stokvis: Levens report FC Donders. In: Jaarboek van de Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen. Amsterdam 1891, pp. 1-35 (online) Franciscus Cornelis
Features section. Frans Cornelis Donders. In: Münchner Medicinische Wochenschrift (formerly Medical Intelligence Journal). Publishing house Jos. Ant. Finsterlin, Munich 1889, vol. 36, no. 27, pp. 468-470.
Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde. Volume 32, Issue 1, p. 231.
Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Donders, Frans Cornelis. In: Encyclopedia of Medical History. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019703-7 , Volume 1, p. 322.
Henning Schmidgen : The Donders machine. A chapter in the history of physiology with Deleuze and Guattari. In: Henning Schmidgen (Ed.): Lebendige Zeit. Knowledge cultures in the making. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2005, pp. 242–279.

Web links

Commons : Franciscus Cornelis Donders - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Donders, The speed of psychic processes, archive for anatomy, physiology and scientific medicine, Leipzig: Veit 1868, pp. 657–681
^ S. Sternberg, The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donder's method, Acta Psychologica, Volume 30, 1969, pp. 276-315.
^ Reinhard Hildebrand: Rudolf Albert Koelliker and his scientific contacts abroad. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 101–115; here: p. 107.

personal data
SURNAME	Donders, Frans Cornelis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Donders, Franciscus C.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Dutch physiologist and pioneer in the field of ophthalmology
DATE OF BIRTH	May 27, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tilburg in Noord-Brabant
DATE OF DEATH	March 24, 1889
Place of death	Utrecht

[1] Donders, The speed of psychic processes, archive for anatomy, physiology and scientific medicine, Leipzig: Veit 1868, pp. 657–681

[2] S. Sternberg, The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donder's method, Acta Psychologica, Volume 30, 1969, pp. 276-315.

[3] Reinhard Hildebrand: Rudolf Albert Koelliker and his scientific contacts abroad. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 101–115; here: p. 107.