Hjalmar Öhrwall

Hjalmar Öhrwall

Hjalmar August Öhrwall (born December 15, 1851 in Nora , † January 11, 1929 in Uppsala ) was a Swedish doctor .

biography

Hjalmar Öhrwall was the son of the pharmacist Anders August Öhrwall and the Märta Elisabeth Westberg. Öhrwall became a student in Uppsala in 1872, a medical student in 1881, licentiate in 1887 and a doctor in Lund in 1889. His diploma thesis Studies on the understanding of taste dealt among other things with the fact that the different taste qualities are perceived by different receptors and conveyed by different nerves. The reason why he presented the dissertation in Lund (and not in Uppsala) was that he was considered a seducer of the youth and agitator. Öhrwall was appointed associate professor of physiology in Uppsala in 1890 and was professor of physiology there from 1899 to 1917.

Öhrwall devoted himself with great interest to the physiological studies of physics and tried in particular to understand the associated terms in the theses Modality and Quality Concept in the Physiology of Mind (1898), Are visual sensations given? (1912), The so-called muscular spirit (1913), The analysis of sensory impressions (1919) and About the division of the senses (1920) to be clearly defined. These are related to proposals for studies on color blindness (1916) together with K. G. Boström and G. F. Göthlin.

Within the physiology of the circulatory system, Öhrwall examined the condition of the frog's heart during suffocation ( suffocation and resuscitation of the isolated frog's heart, 1897; on the periodic function of the heart, 1898). He also published an extensive study of the sinus node (1908; second edition 1916) and several popular papers. He was a co-founder of the Verdandi Society and from 1917 published the student union Verdandi. Öhrwall became a member of the Uppsala Scientific Society in 1916 and the Lund Physiological Society in 1924.

Öhrwall was best known in public for his work on mental illness, cleanliness, population problems and racial hygiene. In Kjell Jonsson's words, Öhrwall became a pioneer in hygiene at the turn of the century. As a source of inspiration for this commitment, Öhrwall found, like Knut Wicksell and August Strindberg, in George Drysdale's social teaching or in his physical, sexual and natural religion, where hygiene became a social program that was supposed to replace religion. Hygiene included body, soul, home, race and society. Against racial hygiene he argued that great geniuses often brought bad qualities with them and that numerous "mental abnormalities" followed high talents, in other cases he saw racial hygiene as the future, as "the new religion". As a doctor, he therefore recommended the sterilization of madmen, “idiots and half-idiots”, alcoholics, vagabonds and others. He saw democracy as a route to an evolutionary choice that would eventually create "the aristocracy of democracy". He also felt like a liberal and translated John Stuart Mill into Swedish.

His son Leif Öhrvall was a diplomat.

Hjalmar Öhrwall was buried in the Uppsala Old Cemetery.

Translations

• John Stuart Mill: On Freedom of Thought and Speech (Bonnier, 1889)
• Hermann von Helmholtz: On the Interplay of Natural Forces and the Recent Conquests of Physics on this Topic (1895)
• John Stuart Mill: About Freedom (Bonnier, 1917) full text
• John Stuart Mill: On the Merits of Religion (Verdandi, 1919)
• John Stuart Mill: On the importance of individuality for the common good and on the limits of society's authority over the individual (Bonnier, 1922)
• Georg Brandes: Michelangelo (Verdandi, 1923)

credentials

• Öhrvall, Hjalmar August, SvenskaGravar.se, read: July 11, 2019
• Swedish graves: Uppsala

swell

• Öhrwall, Hjalmar August in the Nordic Family Book (2nd edition, 1922)
• Kjell Jonsson: "A freshly bathed, thoroughbred Swede on an uncircumcised pine floor in a house without lice in a transparent society where the scientist makes sure that the factories make photo shoes and no one is so stupid as to stare at the football - Hjalmar Öhrwalls Person, Housing, Spirit - and Racial Hygiene as a Social Vision ", In the Service of the Future. From the history of the Volksheim (Stockholm, 1986)
• Swedish Men and Women, Volume 8, Stockholm 1955, pp. 534 f