IngentaConnect The Orang Lives Almost Next Door The Correspondence Between John ...

Author: Koehler, Peter¹

Source: Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2006 , pp. 5-16(12)

Abstract:

Between 1937 and 1959 John Fulton (1899-1960), Sterling Professor of Physiology at Yale University (New Haven) and Willem Verhaart (1889-1983), neuropsychiatrist at Batavia Medical School (Java, Dutch East Indies) corresponded on neuroanatomical topics. Verhaart had easy access to primate brains in Batavia and stayed at Fulton's lab as a Rockefeller fellow (1938-1939), learning techniques of surgery and histology of the primate brain in order to apply it in his own lab. The correspondence relates of their undertakings in research, the preparations for Verhaart's stay in New Haven, the failure of subsequent research plans because of World War II, the camp experiences in Asia by Verhaart, the period of restoration after the war, helped by Fulton, and the political changes (independence) in Indonesia that finally lead to Verhaart's return to the Netherlands in 1950, where he became professor of histology and Director of the Neurological Institute at Leiden University. The correspondence shows how neuroscientists from different parts of the world cooperated. Moreover it is an example of the gradual change from a German (like his teacher Winkler) to an Anglo-American orientation in medical science that started in the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Keywords: history of medicine; neurophysiology; neuroanatomy; Fulton; Verhaart; World War II

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/096470490889376

Affiliations: 1: Department of Neurology, Atrium Medical Centre, Heerlen, The Netherlands

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“The Orang Lives Almost Next Door” The Correspondence Between John Fulton (New Haven) and Willem Verhaart (Java)