Hallerian physiology

Hallerian physiology was a theory competing with galvanism in Italy in the late 18th century. It is named after Albrecht von Haller, a Swiss physician who is considered the father of neurology.

The Hallerians' fundamental tenet held that muscular movements were produced by a mechanical force, different from life and from the nervous system, and which operated beyond consciousness. The activity of this function could be controlled in dead and dissected animals by touching a metal knife to the muscle fiber or by a spark being discharged on them. The electricity operated only as a stimulus of irritability, and it was irritability which was the one, true cause of the contractions.

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gollark: Interesting!
gollark: (the second one would leak the number of matching private messages, but I assume this isn't a horrible issue)
gollark: This could be resolved by accumulating a list of all subforae a user can view and passing that to the query which does search, or postprocessing search results to remove hidden stuff.
gollark: Does the search thing take subforum privacy into account? Oh no.
gollark: <@293066066605768714> Please grant me access to the newly created private subforum.
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