Moritz Nagel (1808–1871): A faceless name in the history of the adrenal glands

Abstract

In 1836, an article was published in which the terms Rindensubstanz (cortical substance) and Marksubstanz (medullary substance) were introduced for the first time with reference to the adrenal glands. The author was indicated as ‘Dr Nagel’, without any further specification. Modern scientific literature often identifies the author's name as ‘N. Nagel’, without citing any primary source. Here, Nagel is positively identified as Moritz Nagel (1808–1871), a student of the German physiologist and anatomist Johannes Peter Müller (1801–1858), who graduated in Medicine at the University of Berlin in 1834. The 1836 article represented the German version of Nagel's Latin dissertation. Nagel later left Müller to devote himself to obstetrics and gynaecology. Although current literature attributes to Nagel the merit for introducing the terms ‘cortical’ and ‘medullary’, based on the testimony of Nagel himself and that of Jakob Henle (1809-1885), I conclude that Nagel described and illustrated results previously anticipated by Müller in 1832. Yet, considering that Nagel's description was the first in print, that he published following his own work carried out under Müller's supervision and apparently with Müller's blessing, I believe it is fair to conclude that the credit for the discovery should be justifiably attributed jointly to Müller and Nagel.