Henry Head in Ewald Hering’s Laboratory in Prague 1884–1886: An Early Study on the Nervous Control of Breathing

Abstract

Henry Head, the English neurologist, received the main parts of his academic education in Cambridge and in London. In addition, he spent two years in Prague where he worked in the physiology department of the German university under the guidance of Ewald Hering. He was interested in the nervous control of breathing and worked out a new method of recording the tension and the contractions of the diaphragm in anaesthetised animals. His results substantiated the experimental basis of the Hering-Breuer reflexes and included the discovery of a new reflex now named Head’s paradoxical reflex. Head not only wrote an extensive paper about his scientific work, the recollections of his time in Prague also formed a considerable part of his autobiographical notes. These were written some forty years later and still expressed a deep affection for his teacher and mentor.

Keywords:

• Hering-Breuer reflexes
• Head’s paradoxical reflex
• control of breathing
• German university in Prague
• 19^th-century physiology

Notes

¹These autobiographical notes were never published but are accessible in the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine in London. Permission to quote from them was given to the author by Mr. Edward C. Williamson on behalf of the Head family.

²The rise of the Cambridge School of Physiology under the direction of Michael Foster is described in detail by Geison (1978).

³Breuer’s curriculum vitae including his friendship with Sigmund Freud cannot be described here; a brief version may be found in Ullmann (1970).

⁴For more details of Hering’s biography see Baumann, 2002.

⁵The Order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star was founded in the 13th century and still is a spiritual institution in Prague. In Czech the monks were called Kri˛iovníci, in German, Kreuzherren.

⁶More details and literature about it may be found in Kruta, 1974.

⁷This magnificent institute had been built in 1868/69 and was directed by Carl Ludwig (1816–1895). Michael Foster probably visited it during a tour of German laboratories in 1870 (Geison, 1978; p. 168).

⁸Details of the recent state of knowledge in this field can be found in Coleridge and Coleridge, 1986.

⁹For Hering’s work in this field see Hurvich, 1969.

Head H (c.1920): Typescript autobiography. Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Archives and Manuscripts. PP/HEA/A.1. The Wellcome Trust. London.

Hering E (1870): Über das Gedächtnis als eine allgemeine Funktion der Materie. Ostwald’s Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften Nr. 148. Leipzig 1921. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft.