Jean-François Heymans

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Jan Frans Heymans.

Jean-François Heymans or Jan Frans Heymans (born December 25, 1859 in Gooik in Flemish Brabant , † April 10, 1932 in Middelkerke in West Flanders ) was a Belgian pharmacologist . The most detailed source on his life is the obituary by the French pharmacologist Marc Tiffeneau (1873–1945; see literature).

Life

Heymans' parents were farmers. After attending school in Hoogstraten , he studied natural sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven and obtained a doctorate in it in 1894. He then worked at Louis-Antoine Ranvier at the Institute of Anatomy of the College de France in Paris where he the about the same French physiologist Marcel Eugène Émile Gley met (1857-1930), returned to study medicine after lions back and acquired in 1887 the medical doctor's degree . The physiologist Ernest Masoin (1844–1915) influenced him most in Löwen . This was followed by three years as an assistant to the physiologist Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond in Berlin. The founder of the Pharmacological Institute Berlin Oskar Liebreich and the assistant at Du Bois-Reymond Johannes Gad became his friends. In 1890 he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Pharmacology at Ghent University. Starting with a tiny laboratory in the philosophy faculty, he built his institute. It was opened in 1903. In 1891 he married Marie-Henriette Henning, whom he met in Berlin and with whom he had eight children. The eldest son Corneille (Belgian-Dutch Corneel) studied medicine like his father, became a pharmacologist like him and began with him the research that won him the Nobel Prize in 1938 "for his discovery of the role of the sinus and aortic mechanism in regulating breathing" Physiology or medicine won. In 1895 Jean-François and Gley founded a new pharmacological journal , the Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie . In 1923 the Belgian parliament decided to introduce the Dutch language instead of French at the University of Ghent , "de créer à Gand une université flamande - to establish a Flemish university in Ghent," Heymans became rector . “The acceptance of the office created bitter enemies for him, most of whom did not understand that one could admire French culture and defend Flemish culture at the same time, that one could be a loyal servant of the fatherland even if one was the same for Flemings and Walloons Right demanded what the unity of Belgium as little harm as the existence of French and German faculties of the unity of Switzerland. ”In 1930 Corneille followed his father to the Ghent chair. In 1931, for health reasons, Jean-François moved from Ghent to Middelkerke on the North Sea coast, where he died and was buried.

research

Heymans' early work dealt with the effects of anesthetics such as chloroform and, probably inspired by Ranvier's histology , with the innervation of the smooth muscles of the leech and later the heart of vertebrates. In all parts of the heart there is a "very abundant, not to be mistaken plexus of nerves."

A research focus, together with Masoin, became the toxicology of hydrogen cyanide , its salts, cyanides and nitriles . The two described the poisoning with malonic acid dinitrile , which the chemist Louis Henry from Löwen had made, and other dinitriles. Shortly before, it had been found that cyanides were converted into thiocyanates (rhodanides) in the body and thus detoxified and that substances such as sodium thiosulphate , which accelerated the conversion, were antidotes . Sodium thiosulphate was effective against poisoning with malononitrile both when it was given before and afterwards (“en point de vue préventif et curatif”), compared with poisoning with potassium cyanide only when given beforehand. The question of protection through pre-treatment with small poison doses was answered in the negative. The Harvard Medical School pharmacologist Reid Hunt (1870–1948) summarized these and other contributions by Heymans - he confirmed the antidote effect of cobalt in cyanide poisoning - in his hydrogen cyanide chapter in the manual of experimental pharmacology . Sodium thiosulphate such as cobalt in the form of hydroxycobalamin are still used today for hydrocyanic acid poisoning.

From 1903 until the end of his career, Heymans devoted himself to tuberculosis , especially vaccination .

Also from 1903 onwards, the most widespread were new methods for examining isolated organs, first - with the later Haller pharmacologist Martin Kochmann (1878-1936) - an isolated heart that was supplied with blood by means of the blood circulation of a second test animal. Then followed, in the words of his biographer, “because daring increased with the years and the perfection of methods, the isolated head of mammals, a preparation of a certain philosophical interest, but above all of the highest importance for the distinction whether active ingredients are direct or acted on an organ by means of a reflex . It was this method that from 1919 - with Corneille Heymans and modified - allowed the remarkable research that soon made the Ghent School of Pharmacology famous. "It was the research that culminated in the discovery of the regulation of breathing by the carotid body and aortic body, where chemoreceptors measure the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the blood. Father and son published many results together. Corneille called his father “his first and best teacher” in his Nobel Prize address. Later physiologists have made a similar judgment : "The physiological role of the carotid sinus and aortic chemoreceptors was uncovered in the late 1920s and early 1930s by Corneille Heymans, his father Jean-François Heymans, and other researchers."

recognition

In 1895 Heymans became a corresponding member of the Académie royale de médecine de Belgique . In 1925 he received the Prix ​​Quinquennal pour les Sciences médicales from the Belgian government. Belgian and French colleagues dedicated volume 38 (1930) of the Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Théralie to him (and Gley) as a commemorative publication on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the journal . The Ghent Pharmacological Institute was named JF Heymans Instituut after him in 1931 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ AF de Schaepdraver: Corneel Heymans: a biographical outline. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 202, Supplement, 1973, pp. 11-26.
  2. ^ Ernest Masoin on the website of the Université catholique de Louvain. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  3. ↑ Tiffeneau p. 8.
  4. ↑ Tiffeneau p. 9.
  5. ↑ JF Heymans, D. DEBUCK: Étude expérimentale sur l'action de chlorure de Methylene you chloroforme du et tétrachlorure de carbone, donnés s injection hypodermique chez le lapin. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 1, 1895, pp. 1-69. It's the first article in the magazine.
  6. ↑ Heymans: About innervation of the frog heart. In: Archive for Anatomy and Physiology - Archive for Physiology 1893, p. 391.
  7. ↑ S. Lang: About the transformation of acetonitrile and its homologues in the animal body. In: Archives for experimental pathology and pharmacology 34, 1884, pp. 247-258. doi : 10.1007 / BF01824916
  8. ^ S. Lang: Studies on detoxification therapy. I. On detoxification of hydrogen cyanide. In: Archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology 36, 1895, pp. 75-99. doi : 10.1007 / BF01825016
  9. ^ JF Heymans, Paul Masoin: Ètude physiologique sur les dinitriles normaux. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 3, 1897, pp. 77–172.
  10. ^ JF Heymans, Paul Masoin: L'hyposulfite de soude ne possède pas d'action curative vis-à-vis de l'intoxication par le cyanure de potassium. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 3, 1897, pp. 359-367.
  11. ^ JF Heyman, Paul Masoin: La toxicité diachronique de quelques composés cyanogénés. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 7, 1900, pp. 297-306.
  12. ^ Reid Hunt: hydrogen cyanide, nitrile glycosides, nitriles, hydrogen rhodanide, isocyanides. In: A. Heffter : Handbook of experimental pharmacology. First volume, pp. 702-832. Published by Julius Springer , Berlin 1923.
  13. ↑ W. Dekant and S. Vamvakas: Gaseous. In: K. Aktories, U. Förstermann, F. Hofmann and K. Starke (eds.): General and special pharmacology and toxicology. 10th edition, Munich, Elsevier GmbH 2010, pages 1026-1035. ISBN 978-3-437-42522-6
  14. ^ JF Heymans, M. Kochmann: Une nouivelle méthode de circulation artificielle à travers le cœur isolé de mammifère. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 13, 1904, pp. 379–386.
  15. ↑ Tiffeneau p. 6.
  16. ↑ J.-F. Heymans, C. Heymans: Sur les modifications directes et sur la régulation réflexe de l'activité du center respiratoire de la tête isolée du chien. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie 33, 1927, pp. 273–372.
  17. ↑ Corneille JF Heymans: The part played by vascular presso- and chemo-receptors in respiratory control. Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1945 (PDF; 184 kB) Accessed March 2, 2013.
  18. ↑ Robert F. Fitzgerald, Sukhamay Lahiri: reflex responses to chemoreceptor stimulation. In: Neil S. Cherniack, John G. Widdicombe: Handbook of Physiology Section 3, Volume II, Part 1, pp. 313-362. American Physiological Society , Bethesda 1986. ISBN 978-0-683-01522-5 . doi : 10.1002 / cphy.cp030210
  19. ↑ Tiffeneau p. 6.
  20. ↑ History of the institute ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Heymans.Ugent.be  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heymans.ugent.be
personal data
SURNAME Heymans, Jean-François
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heymans, Corneille Jean François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH Gooik , Flemish Brabant , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1932
Place of death Middelkerke , West Flanders , Belgium