On saline infusion, clonus, molecules and forgotten scientists: Who was Dr Julius Sander (1840–1909)?

Zitterbewegungen des Fusses bei Dorsalflexion (shaking movements of the foot upon dorsal flexion) were observed independently from each other and described in the same issue of a German peer reviewed journal by Carl Westphal (1833–1890) at the Charité in Berlin and by Wilhelm Erb (1840–1921) in Heidelberg. While Westphal used the term Fussphaenomen, Erb is credited with coining the term clonus for the phenomenon. Both scientists are immortalized by various eponyms acknowledging their respective contributions to science. Little is known however about Julius Sander (1840–1909), in those days resident at Charité, who noticed the phenomenon and presented it to his superiors, Wilhelm Griesinger (1817 −1868) and Westphal. In addition to such observations, Sander made original contributions in resuscitation physiology while working with Hugo Kronecker (1839–1914). With Kronecker, Sander published observations on life saving transfusions with inorganic salt solutions in dogs “ Bemerkung über lebensrettende Transfusion mit anorganischer Salzlösung bei Hunden” a very early work on isovolemic fluid resuscitation. The purpose of this communication is to highlight Sander's scientific contributions and to shed some light on his life, of which a German Lexicon stated that after 1870 no information on him can be ascertained anymore.

Sexology in the Southwest

This chapter examines how state power and sexual science converged in German Southwest Africa during the early twentieth century by focusing on the case of Victor van Alten. Between 1904 and 1906, van Alten, a German colonist, was tried three times for “indecent conduct contrary to nature” after making sexual assaults on several African men in colonial Southwest Africa. His story offers important insights into the legal terrain for male homosexuality in the German-speaking world and foreshadows the impact that influential sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Carl Westphal would have worldwide. The chapter first provides a background on paragraphs 175 and 51 of the German Penal Code before discussing how the van Alten case cast light on some of the common assumptions about liberal progress in the histories of sexology, science, and medicine, as well as the relationship of these disciplines to genocide, racism, and colonialism.

Platzschwindel, agoraphobia and their influence on theories of anxiety at the end of the nineteenth century: theories of the role of biology and ‘representations’ (Vorstellungen)

During the 1860s, Berlin’s exterior physiognomy transformed radically. The city eroded the surrounding rural areas, and the frontiers of the old city centre were abolished. These transformations led to the disappearance of the visible frontiers that once demarcated the limits of the old residential Prussian city. In this context, the description of the clinical picture of agoraphobia by the Berlin psychiatrist Carl Westphal in 1872 marked a turning point, not only in psychiatric theories on anxiety but also in the conceptualization of our experience of space. In this paper, the authors trace the emergence of a new psychology-neurology episteme during the last third of the nineteenth century; and they argue that such an episteme became possible once the relations between anxiety and modern city-scape had been clearly articulated.