Helmholtz’s dissertation on the nervous system: A forgotten early contribution to neuroscience

While Hermann von Helmholtz is widely known for his foundational contributions to physics, his early scientific work was actually focused on the nervous system. In this post, I share insights from reading Helmholtz's 1842 dissertation, which was recently translated from Latin into English by Helmut Kettenmann and colleagues. The dissertation reveals Helmholtz's detailed anatomical study of…