Robert Whytt
His work, on unconscious reflexes, tubercular meningitis, urinary bladder stones, and hysteria, is remembered now most for his book on diseases of the nervous system.
The second son of Robert Whytt of Bennochy (near Kirkcaldy in Fife), advocate, and Jean, daughter of Antony Murray of Woodend, Perthshire, he was born in Edinburgh on 6 September 1714, six months after his father's death.
His remains were given a public funeral, and were interred in a private vault (built two years earlier) in the now sealed section of Greyfriars Kirkyard known as the Covenanter's Prison.
In his research, he outlined the significance of the central nervous system on movement, drew distinctions between voluntary and involuntary actions and clarified the components of the light reflex within the eye.
During that time, many physiologists still supported Descartes' theory of movement which hypothesized that muscle contraction was due to the activation of fluid in the nervous system called animal spirits.
[2] Physiologists, such as Whytt's colleague, Albrecht von Haller, also believed that muscles were capable of action independent of the nerves.
[3] Furthermore, he rejected Haller's theory by claiming that movement must depend on interconnecting nerves that lead to the brain or spinal cord.
He replicated Stephen Hales' experiment that consisted of probing and examining the response of limbs in decapitated frogs.
If the frog's spine stayed intact as it did in Hales' experiment, the limbs continued to respond to the pricking and cutting.
[4] The experiment led Whytt to conclude that the spinal cord was a crucial component in facilitating response action to stimuli.
[5] In 1745, Whytt published An Equiry Into the Cause Which Promote the Circulation of Fluids in the Small Vessels of Animals where he states that the soul, also referred to as the sentient principle, and the body hold equal influence over movement and therefore may govern both voluntary and involuntary action.
[3] In 1743 Whytt published a paper in the Edinburgh Medical Essays entitled "On the Virtues of Lime-Water in the Cure of Stone".
Whytt dropped the doctrine of Stahl that the rational soul is the cause of involuntary motions in animals, and ascribed such movements to the effect of a stimulus acting on an unconscious sentient principle.
[1] Whytt was also author of: An edition of his Works was issued by his son in 1768,[7] and was translated into German by Christian Ehrhardt Kapp in 1771 (Leipzig).
