Moritz Schiff (28 January 1823, Frankfurt – 6 October 1896, Geneva) was a German physiologist and the elder brother of the chemist Hugo Schiff (1834-1915), particularly known for his staining technique. He made major contributions to human physiology, including studies of the circulatory system and the action of the vagus nerve. Unfortunately despite his independent and original spirit and being a much-cited author, he never reached the popularity of his contemporaries Emil du Bois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz and Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard.

Biography

Born into a family of Jewish merchants, Moritz Schiff can be considered as the archetype of the great nineteenth-century scientist, one of the pioneers of the experimental method in physiology as well as a polyglot, who published his articles in German, French or Italian indifferently. He began his studies in his hometown, at the Senckenberg Institute, from which he then moved to Heidelberg, then to Berlin and finally to Göttingen where he obtained a doctorate in medicine in 1844. In Heidelberg, he had Adolf Kussmaul as one of his masters and was deeply influenced by Friedrich Tiedemann's anatomy lessons, which instilled in him a passion for biology, zoology and organic life. Schiff then studied zoology with Lichtenberg and morphology with Johannes Müller in Berlin and then with Rudolf Wagner in Göttingen. He also stayed in Paris where he followed the teachings of François Magendie, later professor at the College de France, François Achille Longet and Pierre Flourens. In this period he had the chance to see real life applications of zoology at the Musée du Jardin des Plantes. Back in Frankfurt, he became director of the ornithological section of the Senckenberg Museum and devoted himself to research in a small personal laboratory and in 1848 served in the revolutionary troops of Baden as a surgeon and for this reason will often be criticized for positions "too dangerous for young people". The son of his teacher Friedrich Tiedemann was killed during this revolt. In the following years Schiff helped Charles-Lucien Bonaparte with the systematics of South American birds in his "Conspectus generum avium" and in his honor the genus sciffornis was created. He then converted to Protestantism to marry Elisabeth Schleuning of Darmstadt in 1860, after his first marriage to Claudia Gitta Trier in 1853. After moving to Bern for political reason, he was an assistant professor of anatomy and comparative physiology from 1854 to 1862, under the direction of Gabriel Valentin and from 1862 to 1876 professor of physiology and zoology at the Institute of Higher Studies in Florence at the invitation of Carlo Matteucci. He was then violently criticized and even sued by leagues who opposed vivisection. At the end, however, he was one of the first to use anesthesia (chloroform and ether) in animal experiments. This controversy, as well as his lack of means, forced him to leave Florence. Thanks to the initiative of Carl Vogt, soon to be Rector of the University of Geneva, he accepted the chair of physiology after the refusal of Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard and started teaching there. In Geneva he continued his research and teaching activities for nearly twenty years, from 1876 until his death at the age of seventy three. The chair of the physiology department of the Geneva medical faculty was then occupied by the neurologist Jean-Louis Prévost. Mortiz Schiff is identified, like his correspondents Jakob Moleschott and Carl Vogt, as one of the proponents of materialism and with the help of these latter two and Alexandre A. Herzen tried to found a positivist magazine, focused on anticlerical propaganda. He will also defend the theses of evolution that were put forward by Charles Darwin with whom he corresponded as well. Without ever founding a school, he had as pupils, disciples or assistants: Alexandre A. Herzen son), Waldemar Haffkine, Nathan Loewenthal, Hillel Joffé and Angelo Mosso. He was appointed foreign partner of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1892.

Works

Schiff was a tireless researcher and according to various testimonies, he multiplied and repeated his experiments, even after some years to verify their results. At the end, he was the author of nearly two hundred scientific publications which were collected in four volumes between 1894 and 1898 (the last volume posthumous) and covered many areas of human and animal physiology: During his stay in Bern, he nurtured the project to publish a complete treatise on physiology, of which only the first volume was finally published between 1858 and 1859 dedicated to the physiology of muscles and nerves. In this volume, he clearly showed that the removing of the thyroid gland from dogs was fatal, and later showed that the injection of animal extract or thyroid transplantation can prevent death. Subsequently, he successfully used thyroid extract to treat humans.

Some writings