Bernstein's Long Path to Membrane Theory: Radical Change and Conservation in Nineteenth-Century German Electrophysiology

@article{DePalma2011BernsteinsLP,
  title={Bernstein's Long Path to Membrane Theory: Radical Change and Conservation in Nineteenth-Century German Electrophysiology},
  author={Armando De Palma and Germana Pareti},
  journal={Journal of the History of the Neurosciences},
  year={2011},
  volume={20},
  pages={306 - 337}
}
This article aims at illustrating the historical circumstances that led Julius Bernstein in 1902 to formulate a membrane theory on resting current in muscle and nerve fibers. It was a truly paradigm shift in research into bioelectrical phenomena, if qualified by the observation that, besides Bernstein, many other electrophysiologists between 1890 and 1902 borrowed ideas from the recent ionistic approach in the physical-chemistry domain. But Bernstein's subjective perception of that paradigm… 
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