Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow
Encyclopedia
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
and physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
who became known for his important investigations on the electrical activity of nerve
Nerve
A peripheral nerve, or simply nerve, is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of peripheral axons . A nerve provides a common pathway for the electrochemical nerve impulses that are transmitted along each of the axons. Nerves are found only in the peripheral nervous system...
s and the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
. He was also a creative inventor of new devices which were widely adopted in clinical medicine and physiological research.
Marxow studied medicine in the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. He started his scientific career as a research assistant in the laboratory of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke
Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke
Ernst Wilhelm Ritter von Brücke was a German physician and physiologist.He was born Ernst Wilhelm Brücke in Berlin. He graduated in medicine at University of Berlin in 1842, the following year he became esearch assistant to Johannes Peter Müller...
(1819–1892), and later as an assistant, in the same University, to the eminent pathologist Carl von Rokitansky
Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky
Baron Carl von Rokitansky , was a Bohemian physician, pathologist, humanist philosopher and liberal politician.-Medical career:...
(1804–1878). Unfortunately, an accident while he was dissecting a cadaver
Cadaver
A cadaver is a dead human body.Cadaver may also refer to:* Cadaver tomb, tomb featuring an effigy in the form of a decomposing body* Cadaver , a video game* cadaver A command-line WebDAV client for Unix....
injured his thumb, which became infected and had to be amputated, interrupting his activities in anatomical pathology
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
. Thus, he had to turn to Physiology, and he came back to von Brücke's laboratory in Vienna after studying for a year with Carl Ludwig
Carl Ludwig
----Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig was a German physician and physiologist.In 1842 Ludwig became a professor of physiology and in 1846 of comparative anatomy...
(1816–1895), another famous physiologist at the University of Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, obtaining his doctoral degree in Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
in 1874.
In the first phase of his career in neurophysiology
Neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...
, Marxow dedicated himself to electrophysiology
Electrophysiology
Electrophysiology is the study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage change or electric current on a wide variety of scales from single ion channel proteins to whole organs like the heart...
of nerve
Nerve
A peripheral nerve, or simply nerve, is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of peripheral axons . A nerve provides a common pathway for the electrochemical nerve impulses that are transmitted along each of the axons. Nerves are found only in the peripheral nervous system...
s and muscle
Muscle
Muscle is a contractile tissue of animals and is derived from the mesodermal layer of embryonic germ cells. Muscle cells contain contractile filaments that move past each other and change the size of the cell. They are classified as skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles. Their function is to...
s, then a research field of increasing prestige, after the pioneering investigations of Emil du Bois-Reymond
Emil du Bois-Reymond
Emil du Bois-Reymond was a German physician and physiologist, the discoverer of nerve action potential, and the father of experimental electrophysiology.-Life:...
(1818–1896), who had discovered the action potential
Action potential
In physiology, an action potential is a short-lasting event in which the electrical membrane potential of a cell rapidly rises and falls, following a consistent trajectory. Action potentials occur in several types of animal cells, called excitable cells, which include neurons, muscle cells, and...
s of axon
Axon
An axon is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma....
s. This field highly benefitted from the technical developments occurring in the physical sciences
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, particularly new devices which were invented to work with small electric potential
Electric potential
In classical electromagnetism, the electric potential at a point within a defined space is equal to the electric potential energy at that location divided by the charge there...
s and currents
Electric current
Electric current is a flow of electric charge through a medium.This charge is typically carried by moving electrons in a conductor such as wire...
. Since biological tissue
Biological tissue
Tissue is a cellular organizational level intermediate between cells and a complete organism. A tissue is an ensemble of cells, not necessarily identical, but from the same origin, that together carry out a specific function. These are called tissues because of their identical functioning...
s have extremely low levels of electrical activity (in the range of microvolts), neurophysiology's progress had to wait for them. Like many German physiologists of his time, Marxow had a good knowledge and ability with physics, and invented a number of devices for the purpose of his studies, particularly the reonome (a kind of rheostat, or variable resistor
Resistor
A linear resistor is a linear, passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element.The current through a resistor is in direct proportion to the voltage across the resistor's terminals. Thus, the ratio of the voltage applied across a resistor's...
used to control finely the intensity of an electrical stimulus). He also adapted the Lippmann
Gabriel Lippmann
Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippmann was a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor, and Nobel laureate in physics for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference....
's capillary electrometer
Lippmann electrometer
A Lippmann electrometer is a device for detecting small rushes of electric current and was invented by Gabriel Lippmann. The device consists of a tube which is thick on one end and very thin on the other. The thin end is designed to act as a capillary tube. The tube is half-filled with mercury with...
in order to use it for measuring subtle bioelectrical phenomena.
From the bioelectricity of nerves, Marxow turned his attention, from 1876 on, to the global electrical activity of the cerebral hemispheres. Neuroanatomists had already determined at the time that its nervous tissue was also composed of cells (the neuron
Neuron
A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...
s), with their bodies mainly located in the gray matter
Gray Matter
"Gray Matter" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the October 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift. It is set in the same area as King's novel Dreamcatcher.-Setting:...
, and filamentary prolongations, the dendrite
Dendrite
Dendrites are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project...
s and the axon
Axon
An axon is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, that conducts electrical impulses away from the neuron's cell body or soma....
s. Thus, it was only natural to assume that they would also display electrical activity. This important discovery, however, had not been made until that time, because many desynchronized electrical potentials with different polarities produce a cumulative global potential which is actually very small and difficult to detect with the sensitivity range of the measuring devices available at the time. Despite this, Marxow was able to prove for the first time that the peripheral stimulation of sensory organs, such as vision
Visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision...
and hearing
Hearing (sense)
Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations through an organ such as the ear. It is one of the traditional five senses...
were able to provoke event-related
Event-related potential
An event-related potential is any measured brain response that is directly the result of a thought or perception. More formally, it is any stereotyped electrophysiological response to an internal or external stimulus....
small electrical potential swings on the surface of the cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...
which was related to the projection of those senses. Strangely, however, Marxow did not publish his results, choosing instead to deposit them in a bank safe, with instructions to reveal them in 1883 only. Meanwhile, the first publications about what was later to be called the electroencephalogram came to light, independently demonstrated by Richard Caton
Richard Caton
Richard Caton , of Liverpool, England, was a scientist who was crucial in discovering the electrical nature of the brain and laid the groundwork for Hans Berger to discover Alpha wave activity in the human brain....
(1842–1926), in Great Britain, and Adolf Beck (1863–1942) in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, both using laboratory animals.
In 1880, Marxows became a full professor at the University of Vienna and was nominated a correspondent member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Austrian Academy of Sciences
The Austrian Academy of Sciences is a legal entity under the special protection of the Federal Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every field, particularly in fundamental research...
. He also devoted part of his research to physiological optics, making important discoveries on the distribution of the optic nerve
Optic nerve
The optic nerve, also called cranial nerve 2, transmits visual information from the retina to the brain. Derived from the embryonic retinal ganglion cell, a diverticulum located in the diencephalon, the optic nerve doesn't regenerate after transection.-Anatomy:The optic nerve is the second of...
on the retina
Retina
The vertebrate retina is a light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera. Light striking the retina initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical...
, and the optical characteristics of the cornea
Cornea
The cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber. Together with the lens, the cornea refracts light, with the cornea accounting for approximately two-thirds of the eye's total optical power. In humans, the refractive power of the cornea is...
. With his increasing knowledge in optical physics, he developed several optical measurement instruments, such as an spectropolarimeter and a hematometer (a device used for measuring the content of hemoglobin
Hemoglobin
Hemoglobin is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of all vertebrates, with the exception of the fish family Channichthyidae, as well as the tissues of some invertebrates...
in the blood
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....
), which was named in his honor, and which for many years found wide application in laboratory medicine and diagnostic hematology
Hematology
Hematology, also spelled haematology , is the branch of biology physiology, internal medicine, pathology, clinical laboratory work, and pediatrics that is concerned with the study of blood, the blood-forming organs, and blood diseases...
.
For many years, Marxow labored under intense personal suffering, due to chronic painful complications of his amputation. Because of this, he became an addict of morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
and heroin (a synthetic derivative of morphine, but much stronger). Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, then a Viennese neurologist
Neurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
, was one of his most intimate friends, and had the highest opinion of him:
- A most distinguished man, for whom both nature and upbringing have done their best. Rich, trained in all physical exercises, with the stamp of genius in his energetic features, handsome, with fine feelings, gifted with all the talents, and able to form an original judgment on all matters, he has always been my ideal and I could not rest till we became friends and I could experience pure join in his ability and reputation. (cited in Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud)
At the time Freud was studying the medical properties of cocaine, and was convinced that cocaine could be not only be used as mild euphoriant
Euphoriant
A euphoriant is a type of psychoactive drug which tends to induce feelings of euphoria, the effects of which may include relaxation, anxiolysis, stress relief, mood lift, pleasure, and a rush although these effects are not necessary for a drug to be a euphoriant. Many euphoriants are notorious for...
, aphrodisiac
Aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
and analgesic
Analgesic
An analgesic is any member of the group of drugs used to relieve pain . The word analgesic derives from Greek an- and algos ....
, but also as a treatment for morphine addicts. He recommended this to his friend Marxow, who then got a much worse addiction to cocaine. Devastated by pain and disease, he died on October 22, 1891, at only 45 years of age. Freud was much affected by guilt afterwards, as a result from this episode.
External links
- Groeger, H., Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow (in German). Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Vienna. Sitzungsber. der k. Akad. d. Wiss., math. nat. Cl. LXXVI Bd, III Abth. 1877.