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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
Freud as a medical student accepted the role of a man of science as defined by the medical milieu of Vienna, as well as the accompanying philosophy and methodology of clinical and scientific research. These forms became a part of his thought and into them he fitted his psychological discoveries as well as his view of himself. Without the medical Vienna in which he developed, Freud would not have been what he was.
1 Trotter, W. (1919). Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, 2nd edn., pp. 77–78. Fisher Unwin: London.Google Scholar
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4 Freud, S. (1960). Briefe 1873–1939, p. 9. Fischer: Frankfurt a.M.Google Scholar ‘To flay animals or to torture people’ echoes the phrase ‘To tease people, to torture animals’ (Menschen necken, Tiere quälen …) from the preface to Max und Moritz. Braun and Schneider: Munich, 1874) by the German humorist Wilhelm Busch (1832–1908).
5 Hermann Nothnagel (1841–1905) was professor of medicine at Hamburg, Jena, and Vienna, and the leading clinician of his time. Neuropathology, chronic diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, and cardiac conditions were of major interest to him. He was an authority on angina pectoris, and it was from this disease that he died. Nothnagel was a clinical scientist to the very last, as shown by the notes found on his night table, undoubtedly written shortly before his death, recording ths signs and symptoms of his heart attack.
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7 Hermann Bahr (1863–1934), Austrian dramatist, critic and theatre manager, influential as the leader of a Viennese literary group; Hugo von Hoffmansthal (1874–1929), poet and dramatist, whose Elektra (1903) was set to music by Richard Strauss; Richard von Schaukal (1874–1942), lyrical poet; Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), Austrian physician, dramatist, and novelist.
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14 Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow (1846–91), physicist and physiologist, worked on nerve and muscle physiology and discovered the electrical activity of the brain, thus initiating research that eventually led to electroencephalography. Sigmund Exner von Ewarten (1846–1926) succeeded Brücke as professor of physiology and head of the Institute. He investigated the physiology of perception, particularly vision.
15 Johannes Müller (1801–58) was professor in Bonn and Berlin. He was not only a physiologist but also a comparative anatomist, embryologist, and pathologist. See Virchow, R. (1858). Johannes Müller. August Hirschwald: BerlinGoogle Scholar. Müller, Martin (1926). Ueber die philosophischen Anschauungen des Naturforschers Johannes Müller. Archiv, für Geschichte der Medizin und Naturwissenschaften, 18, 130–150, 209–234, 328–350.Google Scholar
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19 Ludwig and his friends were all born within a period of five years, and they died within the space of four years. Carl Ludwig (1816–95); Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–96); Ernst Brücke (1819–92); Hermann Helmholtz (1821–94).
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21 Contributious to a Theory of the Mechanism of Urinary Secretion.
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23 The Theory of Sound Perception.
24 Ludwig Traube (1818–76), graduated MD in 1840, was a student of Johannes Müller, and became professor at Berlin in 1857. Devoted attention to experimental pathology and clinical medicine as in the relationship between heart and kidney disease, the effects of digitalis, and the changes produced by section of the vagus nerve.
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26 Gas, water, and electricity were not supplied to the Institute until 1885, when it was expanded further.
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30 Certain wards or sections in the hospital were run by the professors in the University medical school, and were used for teaching. Each professor who headed such a Klinik chose his assistants. Other wards not used for teaching were headed by a Primarius, or senior resident, who was assisted by Sekundarärzte, junior residents. Any physician could apply for such a position if one was vacant.
31 Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, p. 417. Translated and edited by Brill, A. A. (1938). Modern Library: New YorkGoogle Scholar. Jones, , op. cit., pp. 365 ffGoogle Scholar. Amacher, Peter (1965). Freud's Neurological Education and its Influence on Psychoanalytic Theory, pp. 9–20. International Universities Press: New York.Google ScholarPubMed
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36 Ibid., p. 139. Nothnagel was a widower, his wife having died in 1880 of puerperal fever, leaving him with four children. He had a very large and lucrative practice which took most of his time from noon to 4 p.m., and again from 5 to 8 or 9 p.m. See Neuburger, Max (1922). Hermann Nothnagel. Leben und Wirken eines deutschen Klinikers, pp. 149–152. Rikola: Wien.Google Scholar
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42 Adolf Kussmaul (1822–1902), son and grandson of medical men, received his medical education at Heidelberg, where he later taught from 1855 to 1859. Thereafter he was professor of internal medicine at Erlangen (1859–63), Freiburg (1863–76), and Strassburg (1876–88). Kussmaul was an outstanding clinical observer, describing the peculiar respiration associated with diabetic acidosis (Kussmaul's air hunger), as well as the conditions designated as progressive bulbar paralysis and periarteritis nodosa.
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44 Ibid., pp. 107, 146.
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48 Neuburger, , op. cit., pp. 168–170Google Scholar. Contrary to Bernfeld's assertion (see No. 28 above, p. 213), Nothnagel did present numerous neuropathological cases to his students. Clearly Bernfeld did not read Neuburger's biography of Nothnagel, which has a number of references to just this point. Apparently he simply accepted Freud's statement in his Autobiography, which is not fully reliable.
49 Electrodiagnosis and therapy were not peculiar to Nothnagel; they were part of the medical scene of the period, having been introduced in Paris and Berlin in the 1850s, and in Vienna a decade later. See Lesky, , op. cit., pp. 389–393.Google Scholar
50 According to Bernfeld (no. 28 above, p. 221) it was December 1883; Jones gives the date as 1 January 1884 (op. cit., p. 68).
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56 Heinrich Obersteiner (1847–1922), psychiatrist and neurologist, professor at Vienna, had undertaken research on the nervous system in Brücke's laboratory while still a student. He established the first neurological institute in 1882, with research centring chiefly on neuroanatomy and pathology. A lecture on cerebral anatomy which Freud delivered on 12 May 1885 was intended, as he wrote to his fiancée, ‘actually only for one person, Professor Obersteiner’ (Freud, , Briefe, p. 139)Google Scholar. The latter helped Freud that year to obtain a position as locum tenens for three weeks in the Heilanstalt in Oberdöbling, a private mental hospital run by Obersteiner's father together with Max Leidesdorf, professor of psychiatry at Vienna.
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