[Daniel Bernoulli (author's transl)].

Abstract

History in medicine receives life only from personalities. This is a report on the physician and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli which considers also his relationship to his father Johann Bernoulli and also his ambivalent relationship to his mothertown Basel. Very interesting parallels to the life of Hermann Helmholtz are demonstrated. Daniel Bernoulli, later professor of physics, lectured a mathematically based functional anatomy; in this connection he dealt profoundly with the eye and its function. The author deals with Bernoulli's work on muscle contraction (demonstrated on the abducens muscle) and on the elementary perimetric determination of the blind spot.