World of Anatomy and Physiology on Joseph Erlanger
Joseph Erlanger was an American physiologist whose pioneering work with his collaborator, Herbert Spencer Gasser, helped to advance the field of neurophysiology. For their work, Erlanger and Gasser shared the 1944 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology. The prize committee cited their work on "the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibers." Although unstated, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Erlanger and Gasser also recognized their roles in developing the most basic tool in modern neurophysiology, the amplifier with cathode-ray oscilloscope. The prize culminated for Erlanger a distinguished career in medical education and physiological research.
Erlanger was born in San Francisco, California. His father, Herman Erlanger, had immigrated to the United States in 1842 at the age of sixteen from his home in Würtemberg, in Southern Germany. After struggling as a peddler in the Mississippi Valley, he went to California during the Gold Rush. Unsuccessful at mining, Erlanger turned to business and became a moderately successful merchant. In 1849, he married Sarah Galinger, also an immigrant from Southern Germany and the sister of his business partner. Joseph was the sixth of seven children, five sons and two daughters.
From an early age, Erlanger showed an interest in the natural world, a fact that led his older sister to give him the nickname "Doc." In 1889, he entered the classical Latin curriculum at the San Francisco Boys' High School. After graduating in 1891, he began studies in the College of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1895. It was at Berkeley that Erlanger performed his first research--studying the development of newt eggs. He then enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and earned a medical degree in 1899, fulfilling his childhood aspirations of becoming a doctor. Erlanger excelled as a student while at Johns Hopkins, graduating second in his class. This distinction allowed him to work as an intern in internal medicine for William Osler, the renowned physician and teacher.
After arriving in Baltimore, Erlanger decided that medical research and not medical practice would be his life's pursuit. In the summer of 1896, he worked in the histology laboratory of Lewellys Barker, demonstrating his zeal for research by studying the location of horn cells in the spinal cord of rabbits. The following summer, he undertook a different project--determining how much of a dog's small intestine could be surgically removed without interfering with its digestive processes. This study led to Erlanger's first published paper in 1901, and to his appointment as assistant professor of physiology at Johns Hopkins by William H. Howell, one of America's most important physiologists and head of the department. He was later promoted to associate professor of physiology.
Erlanger spent the next several years exclusively at Johns Hopkins except for a six-week trip in the summer of 1902 to study biochemistry at the University of Strassburg in Germany. His career to that point was exceptional for two reasons. Unlike the generation of scientists that preceded him, Erlanger did not migrate to Europe to study. This decision reflected the improving standards of medical education and scientific research in the United States at the close of the nineteenth century. Second, Erlanger, although he was a trained physician, chose to pursue a full-time career in research instead of medical practice. Physician-scientists before Erlanger could devote only part of their time to research, as the rest was spent on patient care.
During his career at Johns Hopkins, Erlanger studied a number of problems that were important in medicine. In 1904, he designed and constructed a sphygmomanometer--a device that measures blood pressure. Erlanger improved on previous designs by making it sturdier and easier to use. Later that year, he used the device to find a correlation between blood pressure and orthostatic albuminuria, wherein proteins appear in the urine when a patient stands. His last few years at Johns Hopkins were spent studying electrical conduction in the heart, particularly the activity between the auricles and the ventricles that is responsible for the consistent beating of the heart. Using a clamp of his own design, he was able to determine that a conduction blockage, or heart block, in the bundle of His, a connection between the auricles and ventricles, was responsible for the reduced pulse and fainting spells associated with Stokes-Adams syndrome.
In 1906, Erlanger left Johns Hopkins and moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he became the first professor of physiology at the university's medical school. Though the university's administration recruited Erlanger to build and equip a physiological laboratory, his efforts were continually hampered by a lack of funds. This situation contributed to his decision to leave Wisconsin in 1910 for the Washington University School of Medicine, in Saint Louis. The medical school at Washington had been newly reorganized and had sufficient funds to meet Erlanger's needs. He worked at Washington for the remainder of his career, serving as professor of physiology and department chairman. Even after his retirement in 1946, Erlanger continued to work part-time performing research and helping graduate students in their work.
After arriving at Washington University, Erlanger devoted much of his time and energy to the formidable task of helping to reorganize the medical school. Erlanger and the other department heads constituted the new school's executive faculty, which oversaw administration and offered significant input into the construction and design of the new medical school buildings. In 1917, the United States' entry into World War I drew Erlanger's attention away from his administrative duties, presenting him with the opportunity to return to the laboratory and to his research on cardiovascular physiology. He participated with other physiologists in the study of wound shock and helped to develop therapeutic solutions that were used by the United States Army in Europe. He also continued the work that he had begun at Johns Hopkins, studying the sounds of Korotkoff, the sound one hears in an artery when measuring blood pressure with a stethoscope.
Although Erlanger would remain interested in cardiovascular physiology throughout his career, he experienced an intellectual transition in the early 1920s, when he took up questions of neurophysiology. The arrival at Washington University of Herbert Spencer Gasser, a student of Erlanger's from Wisconsin and a fellow Johns Hopkins graduate, spurred this change. Erlanger and Gasser would collaborate at Washington University until Gasser's departure in 1931 for the Cornell Medical College. Understanding how nerves transmit electrical impulses preoccupied Erlanger and Gasser during the 1920s. The difficulty in studying nerves was that the electrical impulses were too weak and too brief to measure them accurately. In 1920, one of Gasser's former classmates, H. Sidney Newcomer, developed a device that would amplify nerve impulses by some 100,000 times, allowing physiologists to measure and study the subtle changes that occur during nerve transmission. A year later, Erlanger and Gasser, based on advances made at the Western Electric Company, constructed a cathode-ray oscilloscope that could record the nerve impulse. The cathode-ray oscilloscope with amplifier was a technological breakthrough that permitted neurophysiologists to overcome the barrier posed by the subtlety and brevity of nerve activity. Erlanger and Gasser went on to study the details of nerve transmission. Their most significant contribution derived from these researches was their conclusion that larger nerve fibers conducted electrical impulses faster than smaller ones. Also, they demonstrated that different nerve fibers can have different functions.
Erlanger and Gasser's work on nerve physiology increased Erlanger's already important role in American physiology. Not only had he made significant contributions to the science of physiology, but his career--based on a wholly American education and consisting of a full-time research effort--represented a new generation of American physiologists. For his scientific efforts, Erlanger was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Physiological Society. He also received honorary degrees from universities of California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Johns Hopkins University, Washington University, and the Free University of Brussels. His highest honor came when he shared, with Gasser, the 1944 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Erlanger died of heart failure one month before his ninety-second birthday.
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