r Halleluiah. See Alleluia.

Haller, Albert von, one of the most illustrious physiologists of the 18th century, was born of a patrician family at Bern, October 16, 1708. He was a very precocious child, one of the few precocious children whose after life did not belie the promise of their early childhood. He was sickly and feeble, and disabled by the rickets from taking part in boyish sports. At the age of four he used to read and expound the Scriptures to his father's servants. At eight he had redacted some 2000 biographies from the Dictionaries of Bayle and Moreri. At nine he wrote in Greek the exercises that his school comrades were writing in Latin, and before his 15th year he had constructed vocabularies in Greek and Hebrew, and had written tragedies, comedies, and even an epic of 4000 lines in the manner of Virgil. When some of these youthful productions were in danger of perishing in a fire, the author, to the great danger of his life, rushed in and saved them. Afterwards, however, when time had matured his taste, he made a bonfire of them of his own accord. Choosing medicine as a profession, he began his studies at Tübingen under Camerarius and Duvernoy, but in a short time he exchanged Tübingen for Leyden, where Boerhaave and Albins were then at the zenith of their fame. In 1727 he graduated, having chosen for the subject of his thesis Coschowitz's discovery of a salivary duct, which he proved to be nothing more than a blood-vessel. After graduation he visited London, where he formed the acquaintance of Sir Hans Sloane, Cheselden, Pringle, and other leading physicians and observers. From London he removed to Paris, where he continued his studies under Ledran and Winslow, after which he quitted Paris for Basle, where he perfected himself in mathematics under John Bernouilli. After an absence of five years he returned to his birth-place, where he was appointed keeper of the public library, and, soon after, physician to the infirmary. At the very moment when he was contributing elaborate Latin papers to a scientific journal at Nuremberg, he showed the versatility of his powers in a volume of poems which he published at this time. These various works made him known to George II. of England, who had just organized... Haller was offered the second medical chair, which comprised botany, anatomy, and surgery, and after some hesitation he accepted it. The town of Göttingen was at this time in a state of the most ruinous disrepair; and the carriage of the new professor, as he was driving through the streets, was upset, and his wife was killed. He was devotedly attached to her and bewailed her death in an ode, the finest he ever wrote. All thoughts of his personal afflictions, however, were soon dissipated by the work which he chalked out for himself. The quantity of work that he passed through his hands during the seventeen years that he held his chair in Göttingen is amazing, even though its quality be left out of account. He organized all sorts of schools, made botanical excursions into the Harz, edited and wrote prefaces for countless works, contributed largely to many scientific transactions, took part in numberless discussions, and collected materials to be digested and published during his retirement. The honours he received from the various sovereigns of Europe were numerous and flattering, but he steadily resisted all the efforts made by England, Prussia, Austria, France, and Holland, to entice him away from his native country. In 1753 he retired to Berne, where he was invested with numerous offices, lucrative but easy. The remainder of his life was spent in scientific inquiries, the active fulfilment of his official duties, and the exercise of every charity. He died in October 1777.

Haller's works comprise in all upwards of two hundred treatises, bearing upon nearly every department of medical science,—and establishing his claim to the title of the father of modern physiology. He was, in truth, the first who was bold enough to discard the old chemical and mechanical, as well as the old metaphysical explanations of the laws which govern the animal economy. Basing his whole system on a thorough knowledge of anatomy, and the structure of each individual organ as found in the dead body, he strove to evolve the powers that showed themselves in action in the living frame. These powers—and they are the dominant idea in Haller's physiological works—he limited to two, irritability and sensibility. The former of these has its seat in the muscular fibre, and differs wholly from the latter, which resides in the nervous system. The differences in the manifestations of these two powers he illustrated by detaching a muscle from the frame and stimulating it. He found that when pricked or otherwise stimulated, such a muscle showed its irritability by contracting, though it was not sensible; whereas a nerve when stimulated was found to remain perfectly unmoved, though the muscles with which it communicated were thrown into violent action. From this he inferred that irritability does not lie in the nerves, which cannot be supposed able to communicate a power they do not possess. The germ of this idea Haller seems to have taken from Gorter and Glisson, but in his hands this irritability became a new law, to which he referred almost all the animal functions; and the chief error he seems to have fallen into regarding it is, in having distinguished it too absolutely from the nervous power on which it always depends. The controversies to which his works gave rise contributed powerfully to advance the science of physiology, to which many valuable additions were soon made, among others, the important fact, which Haller either overlooked or denied, but which was proved beyond a doubt by Bichat, that every tissue has a life peculiar to itself (vie propre), and that a special stimulus is required to show the action of each particular organ. Haller had evolved this idea as early as 1739, and had announced it in the *Prime Lineae Physiologicae*, published in 1747; but it was not till the appearance of his *Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani*, 1757–1766, that he made known his doctrine in all its entirety. This work, the greatest on its subject that saw the light in the 18th century, is nearly as remarkable for the elegance and beauty of its style as for the value and novelty of the ideas it contains. A posthumous supplement to this work appeared in 1782. From 1771 till his death, Haller was engaged in publishing his *Bibliotheca Anatomiae, Chirurgiae, Botanicae, Medicinae Practice, et Historiae Naturalis*, which make up in all 10 quarto volumes, but were only completed after Haller's death. His *Opera Minora*, comprising the most valuable of his contributions to the various scientific periodicals, were published at intervals between 1762 and 1768. His *Icones Anatomicae*, which he himself reckoned among his best works, occupy 46 plates, and present valuable drawings of many of the organs, more especially of the arteries. (Zimmerman's *Life of Haller*; Art. by Cuvier in the *Biog. Univers.*; *Bloges de Haller*, by Tscharnier, Baldinger, Heyne, Condorcet, and Vicq. d'Azur.) See also the art. Physiology.