Holmgren, Frithiof

(b. West Ny, Sweden, 22 October 1831; d Uppsala, Sweden, 14 August 1897)

Physiology.

Holmgren’s father Anders Holmgren, was rector of Motala-Vinnerstad parish; his mother was the daughter of the rector of West Ny, Anders Nordwall. Frithiof, one of twelve children, finished school at Linköping in 1849 and then went to Uppsala for medical studies in 1850–1860; his education was interrupted by periods of work as a practicing physician. Wishing to devote himself to the rising science of physiology, but knowing almost nothing about it, Holmgren went abroad in 1861. The high reputation of the Vienna School of Medicine drew him to that city, where the eminent physiologist E. W. von Brücke received him cordially and later sent him to Carl Ludwig’s institute in Leipzig, where many leading physiologists of that period received their basic training in experimentation. In 1864 Holmgren returned to Uppsala. A second year abroad (1869–1870) was spent at the laboratories of Emil du Bois-Reymond in Berlin and of Hermann von Helmholtz in Heidelberg; in Paris he attended the lectures of Claude Bernard.

Inspired by du Bois-Reymond’s observation (1849) of a resting current between electrodes at the front and the back of the eye, Holmgren showed (1864–1865) that this current swung in a cornea-positive direction at both onset and cessation of illumination of the (frog) eye and thus discovered the retina’s electrical response to light, today’s electroretinogram (ERG). It was not until 1870–1871 that he fully understood what he had recorded, believing at first that he had seen the response from the cut end of the optic nerve. But when he finally tried shifting the electrode positions on the bulb, it became obvious that the generative source of the light response was the retina itself. A little later (1873) the retinal response to light was discovered independently by James Dewar and John G. McKendrick in Edinburgh–proceeding, interestingly enough, from quite different premises.

Holmgren realized from the beginning that he had devised a new method of studying objectively the effect of light on the retina and, quite rightly, said that “a great many questions concerning physiological optics... can hardly be solved in any other way now known to us.” Yet Holmgren himself did not embark upon any extensive study of the retina using his new method. When in 1864 he became the first professor of physiology in Sweden, much of his time was devoted to introducing and teaching the new science as an experimental discipline at Uppsala and to acquiring the necessary laboratory space. Holmgren’s first institute (1867) was an apartment in the department of pathology; in 1893, four years before his death from arteriosclerosis, he created a large new institute of physiology, established through a gift of 30,000 Swedish crowns from a private donor.

A serious railway accident at Lagerlunda in April 1876 led Holmgren to suspect color blindness of the engine-driver as the cause. Although the driver himself had been killed in the accident, Holmgren began a study of the 266 employees on the Uppsala-Gávle railway line; among them he found thirteen who were color-blind, of them six green-blind. In July he presented his results at the Nordic Meeting of Physicians, which accepted his conclusions on the basis of demonstrations; by the end of the year color test had been prescribed for railway and shipping personnel in Sweden.

Holmgren’s book on color-blindness was translated into several European languages, and other countries soon followed Sweden’s example in introducing tests for color-blindness. His simple method of testing was based on confusion of colors and not, as earlier methods had been, on the naming of them.

Holmgren displayed increasing interest in applied physiology and in social and cultural affairs. He campaigned for gymnastics through a society of which he was founder and president; he established a society for folk dancing; and with his wife, the former Ann Margret Tersmeden, kept open house for the students from his home county, Östergötland. The couple were devoted patriots and idealists, fighting at conservative Uppsala for the students’ points of view in the cause of liberalism and freedom of thought until they were boycotted by most of their university colleagues. They also helped Artur Hazelius, the creator of Stockholm’s well-known open-air museum Skansen, in his effort to preserve Sweden’s rural civilization. His wife became known as a leading promoter of women’s rights in Sweden.

Internationally, Holmgren was a familiar figure in physiology, much appreciated by his colleagues. His work on the retina’s electrical response to light, originally published in Swedish, was translated and republished in German. Holmgren is remembered for this important discovery and for his work to prevent accidents resulting from color-blindness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For Holmgren’s presentation of the discovery of the electroretinogram, see “Method att objectivera effecten af Ljusintryck på retina,” in Uppsala läkarefönings förhandlingar,1 (1865–1866), 177–191, German trans, in Wilhelm Kühne, Untersuchungen des Physiologischen Instituts d. Universität Heidelberg, II-III (1878–1882). His book on the method for detecting color blindness is Om färgblindheten i dess förhällande till jernvägstrafiken och sjöväsendet (Uppsala-Berlin, 1877), French trans. (1877), German trans. (1878).

II. Secondary Literature. See two works by Ragnar Granit: Sensory Mechanisms of the Retina (London, 1947; repub. New York, 1963), see intro., pp. xvii-xxiii; and “Frithiof Holmgren. Minnesteckning,” in Kungliga Svenska vetenskapsakademiens årsbok, 1964 (1964), pp. 281–296.

Ragnar Granit