Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1162

JOHANN CHRISTIAN REIL (1759-1813) Exercitationum anatomicarum fasciculus primus de structura nervorum. In officinia Curtiana Venalis 1796 [6] 32 pp., 3 fold. plates. 40.7 cm.

Professor of medicine at Halle and later Berlin, Reil is noted for his investigations into the causes and cures of insanity and was one of the first to advocate humane treatment for the mentally afflicted. He founded the first journal devoted to psychiatry, Magazin für psychische Heilkunde. Reil also made important strides in ophthalmology and neuroanatomy, his works on the structure of the crystalline lens and his description of the "island of Reil" in the brain being especially significant. One of Reil's earliest neuroanatomical studies, the book contains his first description of the "island of Reil" in the cerebral cortex. He followed this work with an extensive series of papers on the eye and brain which he published in Archiv für die Physiologie which he cofounded in 1796 with Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Authenrieth (1772-1835). Reil developed special dissecting techniques which enabled him to separate the brain's fiber bundles and allowed him to trace and accurately depict fiber tracts from the midbrain to the spinal cord.

Cited references: Cushing R88; Garrison-Morton 1387

Gift of John Martin, M.D.