Moritz Schiff

Moritz Schiff (born Jan. 28, 1823, Frankfurt am Main—died Oct. 6, 1896, Geneva) was a German physiologist who investigated the effects produced by removal of the thyroid gland.

A graduate of the University of Göttingen (M.D., 1844) and a student of the French physiologist François Magendie in Paris, Schiff became director of the ornithology section of the Frankfurt Zoological Museum in 1846. Because of his medical assistance to revolutionaries during the 1848 insurrection, he lost a prospective post at Göttingen, but six years later he was appointed the University of Bern’s first professor of comparative anatomy.

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At Bern, Schiff demonstrated (1856) that excision of the thyroid gland from dogs and guinea pigs is fatal, and in 1884 he showed that adverse effects produced by the excision could be avoided by thyroid grafts or injections of thyroid extracts. This proved to be effective treatment for exophthalmos (protrusion of the eyeballs) and myxedema (swelling characterized by excess deposits of mucin, the primary component of mucus, and fluid in the tissues).

As professor of physiology at the Instituto di Studi Superiori, Florence (1863–76), and the University of Geneva (1876–96), Schiff was the first to notice the excitatory influence of the cerebral cortex on blood circulation, and he conducted pioneering studies of the physiological effects produced by removal of the cerebellum and partial section of the spinal cord. Schiff also recognized the role of the vagus nerve in regulating heart function—although he believed vagus action to be motor, rather than inhibitory—and he discovered the restoration to the liver of bile salts passing through the intestine (Schiff’s biliary cycle). His major work is Gesammelte Beiträge zur Physiologie, 4 vol. (1894–96; “Collected Contributions to Physiology”).