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The laboratory of experimental physiology at The Ohio State University is one of the oldest in the United States. It was established by Dr. Albert M. Bleile in 1879. Dr. Bleile earned his M.D. degree at Starling Medical College in 1876 (a predecessor to The Ohio State College of Medicine) and then went to Europe, where he spent three years in postgraduate studies in Paris, Vienna, and Leipzig working under scientists such as Dubois Raymond and Hermann von Helmholtz. Most important, however, was Carl Ludwig, the great teacher, who through his students had an extraordinary influence on the early history of American physiology. Dr. Bleile spent a year in Carl Ludwig's laboratory. During this time, he carried out pioneer research on the control of blood sugar, a field in which the broad outlines had recently been delineated by Claude Bernard.
In 1879, Dr. Bleile returned from Europe and accepted a position as Professor of Physiology at the Starling Medical College, where he set up a small but well equipped experimental and teaching laboratory. This was only eight years after Henry Pickering Bowditch, also a student of Carl Ludwig, had established the first teaching laboratory of physiology in America at Harvard.
In 1914, when the combined Starling Medical College and Ohio Medical University were consolidated with The Ohio State University, Dr. Bleile's physiological laboratory became a part of the University. Dr. Bleile, himself, had been a Professor of Physiology at the University since 1891 and continued in this capacity until his death in 1933. |
