Karl von Vierordt

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Karl von Vierordt

Karl von Vierordt (born July 1, 1818 in Lahr , Grand Duchy of Baden , † November 22, 1884 in Tübingen ) was a German physiologist.

family

Vierordt's ancestors came to Baden at the beginning of the 18th century and traditionally devoted themselves to teaching. His father, Karl Friedrich Vierordt , initially worked as a teacher (deacon) at the pedagogy in Lahr, but then moved with his family to the residential city of Karlsruhe in 1820 , where he was promoted to high school teacher and after 1824 also taught his own son at the high school there.

In 1847 he married Pauline (Seubert), the daughter of the privy councilor Karl August Seubert and Wilhelmine geb. Vierordt. Vierordt was related to his wife through their great-grandfather. This connection resulted in six children, only two of them survived Vierordt.

education and profession

From the age of 14, Vierordt attended not only school lessons at the Karlsruhe Lyceum but also natural science lectures at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic. In autumn 1836 he enrolled at the medical faculty of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In 1837 he was reciprocated into the Corps Suevia Heidelberg . After a year he moved to the Georg-August University in Göttingen , returned to Heidelberg in 1838 and spent the last year of his studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . Vierordt passed the medical exams in Karlsruhe in autumn 1840 with top marks.

His teachers in Heidelberg included the chemists Leopold Gmelin and Friedrich Tiedemann , the embryologist Theodor von Bischoff , the surgeon Maximilian Joseph von Chelius and the gynecologist Franz Naegele . Vierordt studied with the surgeon Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck and the chemist Friedrich Wöhler in Göttingen . In Berlin he came into contact with the great clinician Johann Lukas Schönlein and the physiologist Johannes Müller . After further stays in Berlin and Vienna with Josef von Škoda and Carl von Rokitansky , Vierordt received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1841, again as one of the best. He then settled as a general practitioner in Karlsruhe, his first scientific article (on strabismus ) appeared a year later. In 1842 Vierordt was appointed senior surgeon in the grand ducal body infantry regiment, and in 1843 senior regimental physician.

During the German Revolution of 1848/49 Vierordt served in his regiment in the Baden Oberland. He had little sympathy for the revolution; on the contrary, he viewed it as the work of anarchist agitators. In July 1849 he was appointed associate professor for theoretical medicine (general pathology and therapy, materia medica , history of medicine ) at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen , where he also edited the archive for physiological medicine . In 1853 Vierordt took over the physiological courses there and in 1855 the first independent chair for physiology in German-speaking countries. In 1864 he became rector of the university. In his speech on the birthday of Karl I (Württemberg) on March 6, 1865, he dealt with the unity of science. In his 35 years in Tübingen he developed a lively research activity, which mainly included physiological questions. Major scientific publications by Vierordt appeared almost every year, a total of 116. The University of Tübingen also owed the construction of the first (exclusively) physiological institute in Germany (1868) to his efforts. Since 1882 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

power

From 1843 to 1845 Vierordt dealt (without a laboratory) with the physiology of respiration and came to fundamental findings with regard to the relationship between respiration and carbon dioxide excretion: He showed that during hyperventilation more carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is exhaled or the number of Breaths regulate CO 2 excretion.

Vierordt dealt among other things with the " heart strength " (1850, 1851) and the infusion of saline solution (1851). He described the first exact method of counting blood cells with a micrometrically marked glass plate (1852) and first developed sphygmography for recording the arterial pulse (1854, 1855). A monograph on experiments to measure the flow velocity of the blood and its influence on the pulse and breathing rate was then published (1858). He constructed a device that could precisely measure the blood flow using a hydrometric pendulum in the blood stream ( hemotachometer ). The successful textbook Grundriss der Physiologie des Menschen was published for the first time in 1860 .

From 1868 Vierordt turned to psychophysical questions: the sense of time (1868 "3-seconds perception window", 1879), the sense of touch (1869, 1870), the sensation of movement (1876), the language of the child (1879). Another area of research Vierordts treated the spectro photometry (1870-1881). Here he transferred the fundamental physical findings of Joseph von Fraunhofer , Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff to applications within medical science: Spectral analyzes of hemoglobin , bile and urine and estimation of the hemoglobin content in the blood. Vierordt then dealt with the physiology of childhood (1876–1881) and finally with the measurement of sound and sound conduction (1878–1885).

Works

  • Physiology of breathing with special regard to the excretion of carbonic acid. CT Groos, Karlsruhe 1845 (digitized version)
  • Communication of two new methods of quantitative microscopic and cemic analysis of blood cells and blood fluid . Arch Physiol Heilk 11 (1851), pp. 20-26. (Digitized version)
  • The pictorial representation of the human arterial pulse . Arch Physiol Heilk 13 (1854) 284–287 (digitized version )
  • The theory of the arterial pulse in healthy and diseased states: based on a new method of visualizing the human pulse. Viehweg, Braunschweig 1855 (digitized version) (digitized version)
  • The pulse curves of the hemodynamometer and the sphygmograph . Arch Physiol Heilk 1 (1857) 552
  • The phenomena and laws of the velocities of the blood stream . Meidlinger, Frankfurt 1858 (digitized version)
  • The sense of time: after attempts . Laupp, Tübingen 1868 (digitized version)
  • Human Physiology Outline . Tübingen 1860 (digitized version) (2nd edition 1862 (digitized version) , 3rd edition. 1864, 4th edition. 1871 (digitized version) , 5th edition 1877)
  • The use of the spectral apparatus to measure and compare the strength of colored light . Laupp, Tübingen 1871 (digitized version)
  • The quantitative spectral analysis in its application to physiology, physics, chemistry and technology. Laupp, Tübingen 1876 (digitized version)
  • The sound and tone strength and the sound conductivity of the body . H. Laupp, Tübingen 1885 (digitized version)

Honors

See also

literature

  • Julius Pagel :  Vierordt, Karl von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, p. 678 f.
  • I. Krahn: Karl von Vierordt . Tuebingen 1948.
  • Ralph Hermon Major: Karl Vierordt . Ann Med Hist 10 (1938) 463.
  • Armin Danco: The Yellow Book of the Corps Suevia zu Heidelberg, 3rd edition (members 1810–1985), Heidelberg 1985, No. 278.
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Vierordt, Karl von. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1442 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener corps lists 1910, 121/327
  2. ↑ Rector's speeches (HKM)
  3. ^ Carl von Voit : Karl von Vierordt (obituary) . In: Meeting reports of the mathematical-physical class of the KB Academy of Sciences in Munich . tape 15 , 1885, p. 180–185 ( online [PDF; accessed May 6, 2017]).
  4. ↑ a b Document of June 27, 1884, which the State Ministry of Churches and Schools addressed to the Chancellor of the University of Tübingen (UAT 119/138)
  5. ↑ Personnel file v. Vierordts (UAT 126/706)
  6. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart, signature E 14 Bü 1472
personal data
SURNAME Vierordt, Karl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physiologist; Rector in Tübingen
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Lahr / Black Forest , Grand Duchy of Baden
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1884
Place of death Tübingen