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Doctors newspaper online, 14.09.2019
Interview with Expert
Alexander von Humboldt is famous as a widely traveled naturalist. It is less well known that he also obtained an honorary doctorate. About Humboldt's relationship to medicine.
By Angela Misslbeck
Alexander von Humboldt against the background of the volcanoes Chimborazo and Cargueirazo in the Andes. The picture was painted in 1859 by Julius Schrader.
© akg-images / picture alliance
Ärzte Zeitung: Professor Hesse, what was Humboldt's achievement that earned him an honorary doctorate in medicine?
Prof. Volker Hesse: Humboldt has been awarded three honorary doctorates three times: in Dorpat in 1827, in Bonn in 1828 and in Prague in 1848. The doctoral certificate of the University of Bonn was found here in Berlin. It expressly recognizes Humboldt for his achievements in the field of physiology and pathology and their importance to the public.
The honorary doctorate, however, was eventually followed by a whole conglomeration of observations, researches and developments of various kinds, including his emergency respirator for miners. Physiology revolved around the question of what constitutes life in Humboldt's time.
Some researchers assumed a specific life force. Humboldt initially also took the teaching of Vis vitalis, but later refrained from it and decided neither for nor against this hypothesis.
What were his physiological accomplishments?
Hesse: His achievements in the testing of "animal electricity" were above all the use of different electrode compositions and the examination of the influence of various substances (including morphine) on the conductivity of the animal muscle.
Humboldt has discovered exciting things, especially in electrophysiology. He has made about 4000 experiments with 3000 animals for galvanism. Among other things, he has observed the principle of resuscitation by power surges on a resting animal heart and thus practically described the defibrillation. He also applied his electrophysiological experience to healing, for example in his work: "On the Application of Galvanic Stimulants to Practical Healing."
Humboldt is known as a naturalist, geologist and geographer. What points of contact did he have with medicine?
Hesse: The most formative contact was certainly that of Jena anatomist Justus Christian Loder. With him he has – together with his brother Wilhelm – dissecting. But Humboldt had close contacts to doctors throughout his life. This began with botany training at Ernst Ludwig Heim, and continued with a scientific exchange on electrophysiology with Marcus Hertz, all the way to a friendly family relationship with Carl Ludwig Willdenow.
Also on his research trips Humboldt was almost always accompanied by doctors. He made his first journey in 1790 with the naturalist and physician Georg Forster. Aimé Bonpland, who accompanied Humboldt to Latin America, and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, his companion on the trip to Russia, were also physicians.
How did these influences affect the research trips?
Hesse: Wherever Humboldt was, he also had a focus on questions of physiology, anatomy and anthropology. For example, he measured skeletons and mummies during the Orinoco expedition and made skull scans on them. He also measured living people and compared their anatomy. His thirst for research led him to sections of monkeys, birds, crocodiles and shaking eels.
At the same time Humboldt was a very close observer of physiological processes. The infectious diseases malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, typhus and cholera, for example, he saw in their great ecological and social context. He noticed that yellow fever occurs less frequently at higher altitudes. He noted that smallpox vaccination is urgently needed in Latin America, and noted in his work in Cuba the "sinister link between poverty and disease."
Did Humboldt bring with him knowledge from his travels that enriched the medicine of his time?
Hesse: Humboldt was the first to describe altitude sickness with its physiological effects after climbing the Chimborazo. In addition, he brought from his travels with some drugs from the drug treasure of the Indians, including the Chinarinde against fever and the tonic Angosturarinde.
In the self-experiment with the Indian arrow poison Curare, he found that it works without contact with the blood as a stomach remedy. He described other plants as psycho drugs. For Guano he documented the use as a means for envelopes in joint and skin diseases in Indian medicine. There is also a variety of bioclimatological observations.
Modern medicine rarely or never refers to Humboldt – is he unjustly ignored today in this area?
Hesse: Alexander von Humboldt did not make any original first discovery in the field of medicine. But today he is of great importance because as a universalist he sees all areas of nature linked.
He elaborated the complex relationships in nature very precisely and at the same time demanded the dignified treatment of nature and all human beings alike. That makes him very modern.
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