Irritating Experiments

Haller’s Concept and the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility, 1750-90
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-90-420-1852-5
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 76, 354 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 735 g

Reihe: Clio Medica

One of the great medical controversies of the Enlightenment was the European debate on motion, sensation, and animal experimentation provoked by Albrecht von Haller’s treatise on irritability and sensibility (1752).
Irritating Experiments is the first full-length study to explore the theoretical background and the experimental process that led to Haller's description and separation of two fundamental bodily qualities: irritability, or the capacity of muscles to contract upon stimulation, and sensibility, or the capacity of the nervous system to transmit impressions that are felt as touch or pain in humans, or produce signs of pain in animals.
This new concept presented a serious challenge to the reigning medical systems. Haller’s animal experiments were repeated all over Europe, on a scale never seen before. The results, however, were contradictory. Haller's concept was largely rejected, and animal experimentation could not be established as a major research method in physiology. Focussing on procedural aspects of experimentation, the interaction between experiment and theory, the status of surgery, the use of medical and pathological models, and the culture of criticism, Irritating Experiments tries to explain why.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Steinke, Hubert

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PART I: THE EVOLUTION OF A NEW CONCEPT

1 Theories of Animal Motion before 1750

2 Experimentation in the Göttingen Laboratory

3 Haller’s Changing Views on Irritability and Sensibility

PART II: THE EUROPEAN CONTROVERSY

4 The Uses of Experiment

5 Irritability, Sensibility, and Medical Philosophy

6 The Debate and the Medical and Public Sphere

7 Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix: The Spread of Experiment

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Hubert Steinke is currently a research assistant at both the Universities of Bern and Zurich. He received his MD and MA from Bern and his PhD from Oxford University. His publications include books and articles on Haller, the Republic of Letters, and popular medicine in early modern Europe