BRUCKE, ERNST WILHELM VON

born June 6, 1819, Berlin, Prussia [now in Germany] died Jan. 7, 1892, Vienna, Austria German physiologist who helped to introduce physical and chemical methods into medical research. Brcke studied medicine in Berlin and was trained as a physiologist by Johannes Mller. From 1849 to 1891 he was a professor of physiology at the University of Vienna. Brcke was a member of a school of physiologists (including Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Carl Ludwig, and Hermann von Helmholtz) who, about 1847, undertook to develop a new biology rigorously based on physics and chemistry. Although these men did not achieve their goal, they did much to influence the study and practice of medicine. Brcke was an advocate of animal experimentation. His research included studies on the structure of skeletal muscle, on vision, and on the mechanism of speech. Interested in art, he wrote on the relationship of the physiology of vision to painting. It was largely through Brcke that Sigmund Freud, who worked in Brcke's physiological laboratory, acquired the mechanistic bias that is seen in his early Project for a Scientific Psychology.