HALLER, Albert Van, an eminent physician, was born at Berne, on the 16th of October 1708. He was the son of an advocate of considerable eminence in his profession. His father had a numerous family, and Albert was the youngest of five sons. From the first period of his education he showed a great genius for almost every kind of literature. To forward the progress of his studies, his father took into his family a private tutor, named Abraham Billodz; and such was the discipline exerted by this pedagogue, that the accidental sight of him at any future period of life excited in Haller great uneasiness, and renewed all his former terrors. According to the accounts which are given us, the progress of Haller’s studies, at the earliest periods of life, was rapid almost beyond belief. When other children were beginning only to read, he was studying Bayle and Moreri; and at nine years of age he was able to translate Greek, and beginning the study of Hebrew. Not long after this, however, the course of his education was somewhat interrupted by the death of his father, an event which happened when he was in the thirteenth year of his age. After this he was sent to the public school at Berne, where he exhibited many specimens of early and uncommon genius. He was distinguished for his knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages; but he was chiefly remarkable for his poetical genius; and his essays in verse, published in the German language, were read and admired throughout the whole empire. In the sixteenth y r ear of his age he began the study of medicine at Tubingen, under Duvemoy and Camerarius; and continued there for the space of two years, when the great reputation of Boerhaave attracted him to Leyden. Nor was this distinguished teacher the only man by whose superior abilities he had there an opportunity of profiting. Ruysch was still alive, and Albinus was rising into fame. Animated by such examples, he spent all the day, and the greater part of the night, in the most intense study; and the proficiency which he made gained him universal esteem both amongst his teachers and his fellow students. From Holland he, in the year 1727, proceeded to England, where, however, his stay was but short; and, in fact, it was rather his intention to visit the illustrious men of that period, than to prosecute his studies in London. But he formed connections with some of the most eminent persons of the time. He was honoured with the friendship .of Douglas and Cheselden; and he met with a reception proportioned to his merit from Sir Hans Sloane, president of the Royal Society. After his visit to Britain he proceeded to France, and there, under Winslow and Le Dran, with the latter of whom he resided during his stay in Paris, he had opportunities of prosecuting anatomy, which he had not before enjoyed. But the zeal of the young anatomist was greater than the prejudices of the people at that period, even in the enlightened city of Paris, could tolerate. An information being lodged against him to the police for dissecting dead bodies, he was obliged to cut short his anatomical investigations, and effect a precipitate retreat. Still, however, intent on the further prosecution of his studies, he went to Basil, where he became a pupil of the celebrated Bernoulli.

Thus improved and instructed by the lectures of the most distinguished teachers of that period, by uncommon natural abilities, and by unremitting industry, he returned to the place of his nativity in the twenty-sixth year of his age. Not long after this he offered himself as a candidate, first for the office of physician to an hospital, and afterwards for a professorship. But neither the character which he possessed before he left his native country, nor the fame which he had acquired and supported whilst abroad, were sufficient to combat the interest opposed to him. He was disappointed in both; and it was even with difficulty that he obtained, in the following year, the appointment of keeper of a public library at Berne. The exercise of this office was indeed by no means suited to his great abilities; but it was agreeable to him, as it afforded him an opportunity for indulging that extensive reading by [7:11:119]which he has been so justly distinguished. The neglect of his merit which marked his first outset, neither diminished his ardour for medical pursuits, nor detracted from his reputation either at home or abroad. Soon afterwards he was nominated by King George II. a professor in the university of Göttingen. The duties of this important office he discharged with no less honour to himself than advantage to the public, for the space of seventeen years, and it afforded him an ample field for the exertion of those great talents which he possessed. Extensively acquainted with the sentiments of others respecting the economy of the human body, struck with the diversity of opinions which they held, and sensible that the only means of investigating truth was by careful and candid experiment, he undertook the arduous task of exploring the phenomena of human nature from the original source, viz. life. In these pursuits he was no less industrious than successful, and there was hardly any function of the body on which his experiments did not reflect either a new or a stronger light. Nor was it long necessary for him, in this arduous undertaking, to labour alone. The example of the preceptor inspired his pupils with the same spirit of industrious exertion. Zinn, Zimmerman, Caldani, and many others, animated by a generous emulation, laboured with indefatigable industry to prosecute and to perfect the discoveries of their master. The mutual exertion of the teacher and his students not only tended to forward the progress of medical science, but placed the philosophy of the human body upon a surer and almost entirely new basis. But the labours of Dr Haller, during his residence at Göttingen, were by no means confined to any one department of science. He was not more anxious to be an improver himself, than to instigate others to similar pursuits. To him the anatomicaI theatre, the school of midwifery, the chirurgical society, and the royal academy of sciences at Göttingen, owe their origin. Such distinguished merit could not fail to meet with a suitable reward from the sovereign under whose protection he then taught. The king of Great Britain not only honoured him with every mark of attention which he himself could bestow, but also procured him letters of nobility from the emperor. On the death of Dillenius, he had an offer of the professorship of botany at Oxford; the states of Holland invited him to fill the chair of the younger Albinus; and the king of Prussia was anxious that he should become the successor of Maupertuis at Berlin. Marshal Keith wrote to him in the name of his sovereign, offering him the chancellorship of the university of Halle, vacant by the death of the celebrated Wolff. Count Orloff invited him to Russia, in the name of his mistress the empress, offering him a distinguished place at St Petersburg. The king of Sweden conferred on him an unsolicited honour, by raising him to the rank of knight of the order of the polar star; and the emperor of Germany did him the honour of a personal visit, during which he passed some time with him in the most familiar conversation.

Thus honoured by sovereigns, revered by men of learning, and esteemed by all Europe, he had it in his power to have held the highest rank in the republic of letters. Yet, declining all the tempting offers which were made to him, he continued at Göttingen, anxiously endeavouring to extend the rising fame of that medical school. But after seventeen years residence in that university, an ill state of health having rendered him less fit for the duties of the important office which he held, he solicited and obtained permission from the regency of Hanover to return to his native city of Berne. His fellow-citizens, who might at first have fixed him amongst themselves, with no less honour than advantage to their city, were now as sensible as others of his superior merit. A pension was settled upon him for life, and he was nominated at different times to fill the most important offices in the state. These occupations, however, did not diminish his ardour for useful improvements. He was the first president, as well as the greatest promoter, of the Economical Society at Berne; and he may be considered as the father and founder of the orphan hospital of that city. Declining health, however, restrained his exertions in the more active scenes of life, and for many years he was confined entirely to his own house. Even this, however, could not put a period to his utility; for, with indefatigable industry, he continued his favourite employment of writing till within a few days of his death, which happened on the 12th of December 1777, in the seventieth year of his age. The works of Haller are, 1. Opuscula Botanica, Göttingen, 1749, in 4to; 2. Historia Stirpium Helvetiae indigenarum incoata, Berne, 1768, in three vols. folio; 3. Opera Minora, Lausanne, 1762-1768, in three vols. 4to; 4. Elementa Physiologiae, Lausanne, 1757-1766, in eight vols. 4to; 5. Four Bibliothecae, containing chronological lists of every book of every age, country, and language, which had come to his knowledge, respecting medicine, with brief analyses and opinions subjoined. Of these he published the Bibliotheca Botanica, Zurich, 1771; Bibliotheca Chirurgica, Berne, 1774; Bibliotheca Anatomica, Zurich, 1774 and 1777, each in two vols. 4to; and the Bibliotheca Medicinae Practicae, Bale, 1776, in three vols. 4to. One of his earliest, and, in his opinion, one of his best works, was his Icones Anatomicae, which he began to publish in 1743, in fasciculi or numbers, and which principally related to the blood-vessels in situ naturali. But the reputation of Haller rests chiefly on his Elementa Physiologice ; a workwhich astonished the learned world by the excellence of its arrangement, the precision of the style, the immense detail into which the author enters on the structure of the parts, the profound discussion of all the opinions previously delivered as to their functions and uses, the exact and prodigiously numerous references to all those passages in authors where allusion was made to the smallest matters connected with the science, and the revolution it almost instantaneously effected in physiology, owing to the substitution of induction for hypothesis. The principle which pervades the work, and which is also the great discovery of the author, is that of irritability, considered as a force peculiar to the fleshy fibre, independently of sensibility properly so called, and distributed in a manner altogether different.