Berthold, Arnold Adolphe

(b. Soest, Germany, 26 February 1803; d Göttingen [?], Germany, 3 February 1861)

physiology.

Berthold, who came from a simple family of artisans, began his medical studies at Göttingen in 1819 and presented his doctoral thesis in 1823. Following custom, he visited various German and foreign universities—including Berlin in 1824 and Paris in 1825—in order to increase his knowledge of practical medicine and comparative anatomy. Having qualified as Privatdozent at Göttingen in 1825, he began his lifetime career there. He was named extraordinary professor of medicine in 1835 and ordinary professor the following year. He was also curator of the zoological collections.

Since he was absorbed in both the practice and the teaching of medicine, Berthold left many and varied published works. As early as 1829 he wrote Lehrbuchder Physiologie des Menschen und der Thiere, which was reissued many times. His monographs, articles, and notes were published in medical, scientific, and even literary periodicals. A piece of research done with Bunsen (1834) led to the discovery of hydrated iron oxide as an antidote for arsenic poisoning. Some of his other works dealt with myopia, the length of pregnancy, male hermaphroditism, and the formation of fingernails and hair. His short work commemorating Goethe’s centennial in 1849 was one of the first German publications to do justice to Goethe as a naturalist. According to Gurlt, Berthold’s life was typical of a nineteenth-century German university professor with a high reputation. Gurlt’s article has been reprinted without modification and without special mention of the experiment that made Berthold a forerunner of modern endocrinology.

In 1849 Berthold published “Transplantation der Hoden,” a four-page article that in its conciseness was a model for experimental investigation. It is the report of the experiments he performed on six cockerels, using each pair for the removal and transplantation of the testicles. The most remarkable result was the successful grafting of testicles from one cockerel into the abdominal cavity of another, with the cockerel receiving the transplant retaining the secondary sexual characteristics of crowing and combativeness. This article completely escaped notice at the time and remained in oblivion until 1910, when Biedl, in his Innere Sekretion (p. 5), demonstrated that Berthold should be considered the first scientist to have shown by experimental means the correlation of a gland with the milieu intéieur of an organism. (In reality, as early as 1905 Nussbaum had analyzed and evaluated Berthold’s experiments before reproducing them on batrachians.) Since then, all historical accounts have considered Berthold as one of the founders of endocrinology. In reality, he was a forerunner without immediate successor.

Berthold’s article was translated into English and commented upon by Rush (1929), Quiring (1944) and Forbes (1949), who speculated upon the origin of this particular experiment. From a study of the text it is apparent that Berthold was preoccupied with the trophic nerves:

Since, however, transplanted testes are no longer connected with their original innervation, and since, as indicated [above], no specific secretory nerves are present, it follows that the results in question are determined by the productive function of the testes (productive Verhältniss der Hoden), i.e., by their action on the bloodstream, and then by corresponding reaction of the blood upon the entire organism, of which, it is true, the nervous system represents a considerable part [Quiring, p. 401].

It was not the first time that Berthold showed interest in the physiology of reproduction. He was the author of an important, comprehensive study of sexual characteristics in Wagner’s Handwörterbuch, a reference book highly regarded at the time and still of great interest in the history of biology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Among Berthold’s writings are Erster Abriss der (menschlichen und thierischen) Physiologie (Göttingen, 1826); Lehrbuch der physiologie des menschen und der Thiere (Göttingen, 1829) Das Eisenoxydhydrat, ein Gegengift der arsenigen säure (Göttingen, 1834), written with R. G. E. Bunsen, “Geschlechtseigentümlichkeiten.” in R. Wagner, Handwörterbuch der physiologie, I (Brunswick, 1842), 597–616; Lehrbuch der physiologie für Studierende und Aerzte, 3rd ed., 2 vols. Göttingen, 1848); Am 28 August des J. 100, nach der Geburt Göthes in einem Kreise Göttingischer Verehrer— (Göttingen, 1849); and “Transplantation der Hoden,” in Archiv für Anatomie, physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin— (1849), 42–46, trans. By D. P. Quiring as “Transplantation of Testis,” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 16 (1944), 399–401.

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Berthold are A. Biedl, Innere Sekretion. Ihre physiologische Grundlagen und ihre Bedeutung für die Pathologie (Berlin-Vienna, 1910); T. R. Forbes, “A. A. Berthold and the First Endocrine Experiment: Some Speculations as to Its Origin,” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 23 (1949), 263–267; E. Gurlt, “A. A. Berthold,” in Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker (Leipzig-Vienna, 1884; 3rd ed., 1962), I, 501–502; M. Klein, “Goethe et les naturalistes francais,” in Publications de la Faculté des letters, Université de Strasbourg, 137 (1958), 169–191, see 177; N. Nussbaum, “Innere Sekretion und Nerveneinfluss,” in Ergebnisse der Anatomie und Entwickelungsgeschichte, 15 (1905), 39–89, esp. 67–68; and H. P. Rush, “A Biographical Sketch of Arnold Adolf Berthold,” in Annals of Medical History, n.s. 1 (1929), 208–214.

Marc Klein