Breuer, Joseph:

By: Isidore Singer , William Salant

Austrian physician; born Jan. 15, 1842, at Vienna. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, whence in 1863 he graduated with the degree of doctor of medicine and surgery. The same year he entered the service of the Vienna General Hospital ( Allgemeines Krankenhaus ); remaining there until 1866, when he was appointed assistant to Oppolzer. Five years later he resigned that position, and soon after became privatdocent at the University of Vienna.

In 1890 Breuer gave up his docentship to devote himself entirely to the practise of his profession and to writing on medicine. He has been a frequent contributor to the medical and physiological journals of Austria and Germany; his special subject of study having been the physiology and pathology of the nervous system. Jointly with Hering he wrote "Die Selbststeuerung der Athmung Durch den Nervus Vagus" (in the "Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissenschaften," 1868, lviii.). In 1873his monograph on the function of the semicircular canals in the labyrinth, "Ueber die Function der Bogengänge des Ohrlabyrinthes," appeared in the "Wiener Medicinische Jahrbücher." In this monograph he broached a complete theory of equilibrium; maintaining that the peripheral apparatus of the sense of equilibrium has its seat in the semicircular canals. He has contributed to the literature of the static sense, in "Beiträge zur Lehre vom Statischen Sinne." Breuer has also written a number of articles that have appeared chiefly in "Pflüger's Archiv" and other medical papers, and jointly with Sigmund Freud he published "Studien über Hysterie," Leipsic and Vienna, 1895.