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Brucke was a renowned physiologist, anatomist, histologist, and more. Freud had great respect for his newfound mentor, referring to him as Master Brucke and describing him as “the greatest authority I ever met.” In Brucke’s laboratory Freud “found rest and full satisfaction at last” (Gay, 1998; Jones, 1953). The research he conducted under Brucke’s guidance was impressive. Brucke put Freud to work studying the anatomy of the spinal cord and its neurons. At that time, the structure of neurons was not understood. Freud modified the histological staining methods being used in Brucke’s laboratory, and eventually developed a gold chloride method of staining nervous system tissue around the year 1880 (Jones, 1953). This was one of the first uses of a heavy metal stain on nervous system tissue. The silver nitrate method of staining neurons had been developed by Camillo Golgi a few years earlier, in 1873, but it was not until 1888 that Santiago Ramon y Cajal first reported on the structure of the brain using Golgi’s technique. For this research, Golgi and Ramon y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1906 (Finger, 1994). If Freud had not left basic research for a career in medicine, he might have ended up famous just the same.
Freud did eventually leave the university, however, and began a career in medicine at the General Hospital in Vienna. Part of the reason for leaving and beginning his medical career was that he had met Martha Bernays, the woman who would become his wife, and he needed to begin earning enough money to support a wife and family. First, however, he needed to establish himself in his career. At the General Hospital he met and worked with the eminent Theodor Meynert, who, among other accomplishments, was the first to correctly suggest that Parkinson’s disease resulted from abnormal functioning of the basal ganglia (Finger, 1994). This stimulated Freud’s continued interest in anatomy and brain function, and in 1891 Freud published a book entitled On Aphasia . You may remember from introductory psychology that the two primary speech centers in the human brain are Broca’s area (speech production) and Wernicke’s area (speech reception), and that damage to these areas results in Broca’s aphasia or Wernicke’s aphasia. Carl Wernicke had also been a student of Meynert, but Freud’s book on aphasia was especially critical of Wernicke (Finger, 1994). This put both men firmly in the middle of the debate on structuralism vs. functionalism as it pertains to the activities of the human brain (see Finger, 1994). Although Meynert suggested that Freud should devote himself to studying the anatomy of the brain, Freud had had enough of this sort of work in Brucke’s laboratory. Instead, Freud’s interest turned toward the diseases of the brain (Freud, 1952). With the help of a recommendation by Brucke, Freud was awarded a Traveling Fellowship, which allowed him to afford a trip to Paris to study at the prestigious Salpetriere. He intended to study under Jean-Martin Charcot, one of the world’s foremost neurologists of his day, and the man who named Parkinson’s disease after the physician James Parkinson (Finger, 1994).
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