The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium"

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofEncyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium"This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium"Author: VariousRelease date: December 31, 2011 [eBook #38454]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "HALLER, ALBRECHT" TO "HARMONIUM" ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium"Author: VariousRelease date: December 31, 2011 [eBook #38454]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Haller, Albrecht" to "Harmonium"

Author: Various

Release date: December 31, 2011 [eBook #38454]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 11TH EDITION, "HALLER, ALBRECHT" TO "HARMONIUM" ***

Articles in This Slice

HALLER, ALBRECHT VON(1708-1777), Swiss anatomist and physiologist, was born of an old Swiss family at Bern, on the 16th of October 1708. Prevented by long-continued ill-health from taking part in boyish sports, he had the more opportunity for the development of his precocious mind. At the age of four, it is said, he used to read and expound the Bible to his father’s servants; before he was ten he had sketched a Chaldee grammar, prepared a Greek and a Hebrew vocabulary, compiled a collection of two thousand biographies of famous men and women on the model of the great works of Bayle and Moreri, and written in Latin verse a satire on his tutor, who had warned him against a too great excursiveness. When still hardly fifteen he was already the author of numerous metrical translations from Ovid, Horace and Virgil, as well as of original lyrics, dramas, and an epic of four thousand lines on the origin of the Swiss confederations, writings which he is said on one occasion to have rescued from a fire at the risk of his life, only, however, to burn them a little later (1729) with his own hand. Haller’s attention had been directed to the profession of medicine while he was residing in the house of a physician at Biel after his father’s death in 1721; and, following the choice then made, he while still a sickly and excessively shy youth went in his sixteenth year to the university of Tübingen (December 1723), where he studied under Camerarius and Duvernoy. Dissatisfied with his progress, he in 1725 exchanged Tübingen for Leiden, where Boerhaave was in the zenith of his fame, and where Albinus had already begun to lecture in anatomy. At that university he graduated in May 1727, undertaking successfully in his thesis to prove that the so-called salivary duct, claimed as a recent discovery by Coschwitz, was nothing more than a blood-vessel. Haller then visited London, making the acquaintance of Sir Hans Sloane, Cheselden, Pringle, Douglas and other scientific men; next, after a short stay in Oxford, he visited Paris, where he studied under Ledran and Winslöw; and in 1728 he proceeded to Basel, where he devoted himself to the study of the higher mathematics under John Bernoulli. It was during his stay there also that his first great interest in botany was awakened; and, in the course of a tour (July-August, 1828), through Savoy, Baden and several of the Swiss cantons, he began a collection of plants which was afterwards the basis of his great work on the flora of Switzerland. From a literary point of view the main result of this, the first of his many journeys through the Alps, was hispoementitledDie Alpen, which was finished in March 1729, and appeared in the first edition (1732) of hisGedichte. This poem of 490 hexameters is historically important as one of the earliest signs of the awakening appreciation of the mountains (hitherto generally regarded as horrible monstrosities), though it is chiefly designed to contrast the simple and idyllic life of the inhabitants of the Alps with the corrupt and decadent existence of the dwellers in the plains.

In 1729 he returned to Bern and began to practise as a physician; his best energies, however, were devoted to the botanical and anatomical researches which rapidly gave him a European reputation, and procured for him from George II.in 1736 a call to the chair of medicine, anatomy, botany and surgery in the newly founded university of Göttingen. He became F.R.S. in 1743, and was ennobled in 1749. The quantity of work achieved by Haller in the seventeen years during which he occupied his Göttingen professorship was immense. Apart from the ordinary work of his classes, which entailed upon him the task of newly organizing a botanical garden, an anatomical theatre and museum, an obstetrical school, and similar institutions, he carried on without interruption those original investigations in botany and physiology, the results of which are preserved in the numerous works associated with his name; he continued also to persevere in his youthful habit of poetical composition, while at the same time he conducted a monthly journal (theGöttingische gelehrte Anzeigen), to which he is said to have contributed twelve thousand articles relating to almost every branch of human knowledge. He also warmly interested himself in most of the religious questions, both ephemeral and permanent, of his day; and the erection of the Reformed church in Göttingen was mainly due to his unwearied energy. Notwithstanding all this variety of absorbing interests he never felt at home in Göttingen; his untravelled heart kept ever turning towards his native Bern (where he had been elected a member of the great council in 1745), and in 1753 he resolved to resign his chair and return to Switzerland.

The twenty-one years of his life which followed were largely occupied in the discharge of his duties in the minor political post of aRathhausammannwhich he had obtained by lot, and in the preparation of hisBibliotheca medica, the botanical, surgical and anatomical parts of which he lived to complete; but he also found time to write the three philosophical romances—Usong(1771),Alfred(1773) andFabius and Cato(1774),—in which his views as to the respective merits of despotism, of limited monarchy and of aristocratic republican government are fully set forth. About 1773 the state of his health rendered necessary his entire withdrawal from public business; for some time he supported his failing strength by means of opium, on the use of which he communicated a paper to theProceedingsof the Göttingen Royal Society in 1776; the excessive use of the drug is believed, however, to have hastened his death, which occurred on the 17th of December 1777. Haller, who had been three times married, left eight children, the eldest of whom, Gottlieb Emanuel, attained to some distinction as a botanist and as a writer on Swiss historical bibliography (1785-1788, 7 vols.).

Subjoined is a classified but by no means an exhaustive list of his very numerous works in various branches of science and literature (a complete list, up to 1775, numbering 576 items, including various editions, was published by Haller himself, in 1775, at the end of vol. 6 of the correspondence addressed to him by various learned friends):—(1) Anatomical:—Icones anatomicae(1743-1754);Disputationes anatomicae selectiores(1746-1752); andOpera acad. minora anatomici argumenti(1762-1768). (2) Physiological:—De respiratione experimenta anatomica(1747);Primae lineae physiologiae(1747); andElementa physiologiae corporis humani(1757-1760). (3) Pathological and surgical:—Opuscula pathologica(1754);Disputationum chirurg. collectio(1777); also careful editions of Boerhaave’sPraelectiones academicae in suas institutiones rei medicae(1739), and of theArtis medicae principiaof the same author (1769-1774). (4) Botanical:—Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helveticarum(1742);Opuscula botanica(1749);Bibliotheca botanica(1771). (5) Theological:—Briefe über die wichtigsten Wahrheiten der Offenbarung(1772); andBriefe zur Vertheidigung der Offenbarung(1775-1777). (6) Poetical:—Gedichte(1732, 12th ed., 1777). His three romances have been already mentioned. Several volumes of lectures and “Tagebücher” or journals were published posthumously.See J. G. Zimmermann,Das Leben des Herrn von Haller(1755), and the articles by Förster and Seiler in Ersch and Gruber’sEncyklopädie, and particularly the detailed biography (over 500 pages) by L. Hirzel, printed at the head of his elaborate edition (Frauenfeld, 1882) of Haller’sGedichte.

See J. G. Zimmermann,Das Leben des Herrn von Haller(1755), and the articles by Förster and Seiler in Ersch and Gruber’sEncyklopädie, and particularly the detailed biography (over 500 pages) by L. Hirzel, printed at the head of his elaborate edition (Frauenfeld, 1882) of Haller’sGedichte.

HALLER, BERTHOLD(1492-1536), Swiss reformer, was born at Aldingen in Württemberg, and after studying at Pforzheim, where he met Melanchthon, and at Cologne, taught in the gymnasium at Bern. He was appointed assistant preacher at the church of St Vincent in 1515 and people’s priest in 1520. Even before his acquaintance with Zwingli in 1521 he had begun to preach the Reformation, his sympathetic character and his eloquence making him a great force. In 1526 he was at the abortive conference of Baden, and in January 1528 drafted and defended the ten theses for the conference of Bern which established the new religion in that city. He left no writings except a few letters which are preserved in Zwingli’s works. He died on the 25th of February 1536.

Life by Pestalozzi (Elberfeld, 1861).

HALLEY, EDMUND(1656-1742), English astronomer, was born at Haggerston, London, on the 29th of October 1656. His father, a wealthy soapboiler, placed him at St Paul’s school, where he was equally distinguished for classical and mathematical ability. Before leaving it for Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1673, he had observed the change in the variation of the compass, and at the age of nineteen, he supplied a new and improved method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits (Phil. Trans.xi. 683). His detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to the conclusion that a more accurate ascertainment of the places of the fixed stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy; and, finding that Flamsteed and Hevelius had already undertaken to catalogue those visible in northern latitudes, he assumed to himself the task of making observations in the southern hemisphere. A recommendation from Charles II. to the East India Company procured for him an apparently suitable, though, as it proved, ill-chosen station, and in November 1676 he embarked for St Helena. On the voyage he noticed the retardation of the pendulum in approaching the equator; and during his stay on the island he observed, on the 7th of November 1677, a transit of Mercury, which suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for determining the sun’s distance. He returned to England in November 1678, having by the registration of 341 stars won the title of the “Southern Tycho,” and by the translation to the heavens of the “Royal Oak,” earned a degree of master of arts, conferred at Oxford by the king’s command on the 3rd of December 1678, almost simultaneously with his election as fellow of the Royal Society. Six months later, the indefatigable astronomer started for Danzig to set at rest a dispute of long standing between Hooke and Hevelius as to the respective merits of plain or telescopic sights; and towards the end of 1680 he proceeded on a continental tour. In Paris he observed, with G. D. Cassini, the great comet of 1680 after its perihelion passage; and having returned to England, he married in 1682 Mary, daughter of Mr Tooke, auditor of the exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously for fifty-five years. He now fixed his residence at Islington, engaged chiefly upon lunar observations, with a view to the great desideratum of a method of finding the longitude at sea. His mind, however, was also busy with the momentous problem of gravity. Having reached so far as to perceive that the central force of the solar system must decrease inversely as the square of the distance, and applied vainly to Wren and Hooke for further elucidation, he made in August 1684 that journey to Cambridge for the purpose of consulting Newton, which resulted in the publication of thePrincipia. The labour and expense of passing this great work through the press devolved upon Halley, who also wrote the prefixed hexameters ending with the well-known line—

Nec fas est propius mortali attingere divos.

In 1696 he was, although a zealous Tory, appointed deputy comptroller of the mint at Chester, and (August 19, 1698) he received a commission as captain of the “Paramour Pink” for the purpose of making extensive observations on the conditions of terrestrial magnetism. This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years, and extended to the 52nd degree of S. latitude. The results were published in aGeneral Chart of the Variation of the Compassin 1701; and immediately afterwards he executed by royal command a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an elaborate map of which he produced in 1702. On his return from a journey to Dalmatia, for the purpose of selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste, he was nominated, November 1703, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary degree ofdoctor of laws in 1710. Between 1713 and 1721 he acted as secretary to the Royal Society, and early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as astronomer-royal. Although in his sixty-fourth year, he undertook to observe the moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and actually carried out his purpose. He died on the 14th of January 1742. His tomb is in the old graveyard of St Margaret’s church, Lee, Kent.

Halley’s most notable scientific achievements were—his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion (1693), his discovery of the proper motions of the fixed stars (1718), his theory of variation (1683), including the hypothesis of four magnetic poles, revived by C. Hansteen in 1819, and his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; his calculation of the orbit of the 1682 comet (the first ever attempted), coupled with a prediction of its return, strikingly verified in 1759; and his indication (first in 1679, and again in 1716, Phil. Trans., No. 348) of a method extensively used in the 18th and 19th centuries for determining the solar parallax by means of the transits of Venus.

His principal works areCatalogus stellarum australium(London, 1679), the substance of which was embodied in vol. iii. of Flamsteed’sHistoria coelestis(1725);Synopsis astronomiae cometicae(Oxford, 1705);Astronomical Tables(London, 1752); also eighty-one miscellaneous papers of considerable interest, scattered through thePhilosophical Transactions. To these should be added his version from the Arabic (which language he acquired for the purpose) of the treatise of ApolloniusDe sectione rationis, with a restoration of his two lost booksDe sectione spatii, both published at Oxford in 1706; also his fine edition of theConicsof Apollonius, with the treatise by SerenusDe sectione cylindri et coni(Oxford, 1710, folio). His edition of theSphericsof Menelaus was published by his friend Dr Costard in 1758. See alsoBiographia Britannica, vol. iv. (1757);Gent. Mag.xvii. 455, 503; A. Wood,Athenae Oxon.(Bliss), iv. 536; J. Aubrey,Lives, ii. 365; F. Baily,Account of Flamsteed; Sir D. Brewster,Life of Newton; R. Grant,History of Astronomy, p. 477 andpassim; A. J. Rudolph,Bulletin of Bibliography, No. 14 (Boston, 1904); E. F. McPike, “Bibliography of Halley’s Comet,”Smithsonian Misc. Collections, vol. xlviii. pt. i. (1905);Notes and Queries, 9th series, vols. x. xi. xii., 10th series, vol. ii. (E. F. McPike). A collection of manuscripts regarding Halley is preserved among the Rigaud papers in the Bodleian library, Oxford; and many of his unpublished letters exist at the Record Office and in the library of the Royal Society.

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