The Prague student Henry Head (on occasion of his 150th birth anniversary as well as the 125th anniversary of his Prague sojourn completion)
Abstract
The famous British neurologist Henry Head (1861-1940) remarkably embarked on his scientifical career when spending two of his student years (1884-1886) at the Department of Physiology of the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague under the guidance of Professor Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering (1834-1918) who in 1868, together with the budding illustrious physician and co-founder of psychoanalysis Josef Breuer (1842-1925), had discovered the mechanism of reflex nervous control of breathing movements via the vagus nerve (the Hering-Breuer reflex). Inventively continuing their research, Head discovered a reversal of the above reflex (now called the Head's paradoxical reflex) the physiological importance of which would later be appreciated.
Back in England, after graduating from Cambridge, working at several hospitals in London as well as at the County Mental Hospital in Rainhill near Liverpool, Head focused his interest in psychological aspects of disease, in sensory physiology and in aphasia and kindred disorders of speech. He identified the so-called Head zones and sensory dermatomes, elucidated the mechanism of referred pain, performed an autoexperiment on nerve regeneration, discovered the protopathic and epicritic sensibility