Eduard Hitzig

Eduard Hitzig (February 6, 1839 - August 20, 1907) was a German neuropsychiatrist from Berlin. He studied medicine in Berlin and Würzburg. He had as instructors, famous men such as Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), Moritz Heinrich Romberg (1795-1873) and Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890). He received his doctorate in 1862, and subsequently practiced medicine in Berlin and Würzburg. In 1875 he became director of the Burghölzli asylum, as well as professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich. In 1885 Hitzig became a professor at the University of Halle, where he remained until his retirement in 1903.

Hitzig is remembered for his work concerning the interaction between electrical current and the brain. In 1870, Hitzig assisted by anatomist Gustav Fritsch (1837-1927), applied electricity via a thin probe to the exposed cerebral cortex of a dog without anesthesia. They performed these studies at the home of Fritsch because the University of Berlin would not allow such experimentation in their laboratories. What Hitzig and Fritsch had discovered is that electrical stimulation of different areas of the cerebrum caused involuntary muscular contractions of specific parts of the dog's body. They identified the brains' "motor strip" which is a vertical strip of brain tissue on the cerebrum in the back of the frontal lobe which controls different muscles in the body. In 1870 Hitzig published his findings in an essay called "On the Electrical Excitability of the Cerebrum"." This experimentation was considered the first time anyone had done any "localized study" regarding the brain and electrical current.

However this was not the first time Hitzig had experienced the interaction between the brain and electricity; earlier in his career as a physician working with the Prussian Army he experimented on wounded soldiers whose skulls were fractured by bullets. Hitzig noticed that applying a small electrical current to the brains of these soldiers caused involuntary muscular movement. Apparently Hitzig's crude experimentation was inspired by work of 18th century physicist Luigi Galvani who noticed this same electrical phenomena on the brains of frogs.

Hitzig and Fritsch's work opened the door to further "localized testing" of the brain by many others including Scottish neurologist, David Ferrier.

References

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* Mind as Mosaic (The Robot in the Machine), Bruce H. Hinrichs