Brücke, Ernst Wilhelm von (1819-1892)

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BRÜCKE, ERNST WILHELM VON (1819-1892)

A German doctor and physiologist, Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke was born June 6, 1819, and died January 7, 1892, in Vienna. The son of a portrait and historical painter, following his mother's premature death he was raised by his uncle, the superintendent C. Droysen, in Stralsund. He studied medicine in Berlin and Heidelberg in 1838 and became a doctor of medicine in Berlin in 1842. In 1843 he became an assistant to Johannes Müller at the Museum of Comparative Anatomy and a prosector; in 1846 he also served as a teacher of anatomy at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.

Brücke completed his degree in physiology in 1844 and was appointed full professor of physiology and general pathology in Königsberg, and professor of physiology and (microscopic) anatomy in Vienna, where he held the chair of physiology for forty years, until his appointment as professor emeritus in 1890. He was ennobled in 1873 and became rector of the University of Vienna in 1879. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, the Prussian Order of Merit, and the Upper House of Austria, and received numerous decorations and honorary distinctions. As a co-founder of the Physics Society in 1845 (the Berlin and later the German Physics Societies were offshoots of this organization), he was, along with Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Karl Ludwig, one of the defenders of organic physics, which, in contrast to the then-dominant vitalist tradition, held that all vital manifestations were the result of physico-chemical forces in the organism.

Brücke was the most learned physiologist of his time and helped enrich several areas of natural science. He was active in the physiology of optics, the physiology of plants, the physiology of digestion, of the blood, the nerves, and the muscles, cellular physiology, biochemistry (the purification of pepsins, which led to our understanding of enzymes), the physiology of speech, and even linguistics. His many publications included the two-volume Vorlesungen über Physiologie (Lessons on Physiology; 1873, 1874). Brücke's laboratory was a place where fundamental research on the exact sciences of nature was carried out and he introduced a new methodology to the Vienna school of medicine, which was strongly influenced by his work.

Sigmund Freud, who described Brücke as the "highest authority who has ever had an influence on me," worked in Brücke's laboratory between 1876 and 1882. His earliest writings on neurophysiology are based on his work there and Brücke's influence is clearly evident in Freud's earliest theoretical writings on psychoanalysis. Brücke, who had sponsored Freud for a professorship, referred, in his letter of recommendation, to Freud's work on neurology as being "very important." He also helped Freud obtain the travel stipend that allowed him to work with Charcot in Paris.

Helmut GrÖger

See also: "Autobiographical Study, An"; Freud, Ernst; German romanticism and psychoanalysis; Interpretation of Dreams, The ; Reversal into the opposite; Science and psychoanalysis; Vienna General Hospital.