Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 226-229. (Budapest, 1914)
TANULMÁNYOK - Elek Gábor: 2013-ban volt Bauer Ervin halálának 75. évfordulója
218 Comm, de Hist. Artis Med. 226-229 (2014) Electric field in biological phenomena Bauer sets out to use electric notions in addition to thermodynamic ones in his logical constructions. Although colloid chemistry speaks many times about electric charge, the change in Bauer’s viewpoint is not only the effect of his workplace, of Ruzicka’s-school. Prague had a special feature concerning biological colloid chemistry - this was the so-called ‘School of Prague’ (see Bertalanfjy 1932 181.). It was evident already that the living organism cannot be regarded a thermal machine. In Prague small group of specialist went into the electric aspects of energetic organisation of living beings. According to contemporary physics {Rutherford, Bohr, etc) bodies are composed of atoms (or ions) and contemporary atom physics has proved that atoms/ions are built with elementary particles moving in field of force, which is dynamically but not statically equilibrated. There are potential differences between various ions or contacting phases (bodies) too (cohesive attraction, valence). In fluids these potential differences can equalize and statistical equilibrium ensues. Such equalization, however, in solids (crystals) is impossible, the potential differences create electric field, which is also dynamically and not statistically equilibrated. In living creatures - which are partially jellified - external factors (nutrients and oxygen) recreate such potentials over and over and the final effect is a permanently produced electric field. The equilibrium of this field in living organisms is seemingly stationary (steady state) but periodical processes (assimilation, dissimilation, circulation, excretion, etc) are superposed over it so the end result is a quasi-stationary equilibrium. Consequently vital processes are in the last analysis electromagnetic processes, living beings are electromagnetic systems and biology is - strictly speaking - ‘electric biology’ {Fürth 1928; 1928a; Zwaardemaker 1927 261-263.). The electric charge of various tissue-points might be estimated by vital staining. According to Rudolf Keller the cathode points (negative poles) in tissue shall be coloured by positively charged stain molecules and the anode ones (positive poles) by negative stains (electric histochemistry, Keller 1929). Keller, a publishing company owner, was the central figure of the ‘school of Prague’ group. He did belong to neither a state university nor an academic research laboratory - he called himself ‘unofficial’ (private) researcher
