More importantly, his standing was confirmed by membership of the main European academies, ie. The loss of two dearly loved wifes and of three young children, his quarrels with colleagues from the university and the separation from his home and his friends in Bern weighted down on him.
Setting his hopes on a political career and aiming to secure the social and economic position of his family in Bernese patrician society, Haller returned to his home town in He had already in been elected as member of the Great Council Grosser Rat and was now appointed as Rathausammann, a relatively modest charge in itself but a good position to set up a political career. In Haller was elected director of the salt mines in Roche in the French part of the Bernese territories, a well paid and respected position which he accepted gladly as he could continue to perform his own research and implement some of the agricultural reforms he promoted.
In , he returned to Bern and continued to work as an important member of various Bernese municipal bodies such as the Economic Committee and the Medical Council. Due to his multiple role as an 'enlightened' civil servant, author of essential treatises on fodder plants, cereals and rinderpest and president of the Economic Society of Bern , , — he was one of the central figures of the economic-patriotic reform movement in Bern. He is considered as one of the most accomplished men in history of science.
Born in Bern, Switzerland, he lost his father at the age At age 16 he enrolled at University of Tubingen Germany but subsequently moved to the University of Leiden Holland to study with the famous Dutch botanist and chemist, Herman Boerhaave and anatomist Bernhard Albinus, both at the peak of their career. Haller graduated from Leiden at age As a life-long student, he continued his education at University of Gottingen, obtaining his doctorate in at age He married three times, each of his first two wives succumbing to early deaths, and raised eight children to adulthood.
It was in Bern, in , that Haller began the anatomical and botanical research that he would pursue even after he began his political career. Haller held an iatromechanical view of anatomy and physiology, in which the body works by mechanism, according to the laws of physics, as opposed to a vitalist view in which the soul or anima drives the body.
He made studies of teratology birth defects and notably used the anatomy of Siamese twins who shared a heart to prove that the blood did not carry consciousness or will. Haller also formulated an explanation of how the heart automatically beats. According to Haller, the muscles of the heart became irritated when filled with blood, and contracted to pump the fluid out again. Haller performed similar investigations into the lungs, vascular system, and nervous system, always explaining the observed physiology as a function of anatomical structure.
However, Haller never published any scientific work supporting spermism, nor performed any research in that area. It seemed clear to Haller that no miniature embryo could exist in the parts of the polyps that had been severed and grew back into whole animals, and he wrote in that based on this new research, any scientist who was not unreasonably devoted to the theory of preformationism would be similarly convinced that development occurred as emergence of form as the theory of epigenesis states, not as the growth of miniature preformed parts.
And yet, after doing extensive microscopic research on chicken embryos, Haller became just such a devotee of ovist preformationism. Although both concepts predated Haller, he was the first to demonstrate experimentally that sensibility the ability to produce sensation existed only in organs supplied with nerves, while irritability a reaction to stimuli was a property of the organ or tissue.
His concept of irritability was particularly important in efforts to understand muscle physiology. His ideas were published in in De partibus corporis humani sensibilibus et irritabilibus. In Haller returned to Bern.
He took a position with the Swiss state service and then, from until , was resident manager of the Bernese saltworks.
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