Emil du Bois-Reymond and Dom Pedro II: Research development on bioelectricity and electric fish

Emile Du Bois-Reymond pioneered scientific electrophysiology in parallel with 19thcentury studies on various electric fish that underlie the great development of modern electrophysiology (Piccolino, 1997; Piccolino, 2011). Dom Pedro II, Brazilian Emperor, on his second long trip abroad, fromMarch 1876 to September 1877, on his stop in Germany, met the researcher when the ruler visited the new Institute of Physiology at the University of Berlin (Bezerra, 2009; Ministério Da Educação Esaúde, 1942, p. 21–22). Shortly after (1880), with the support of Pedro II, the Laboratory of Physiology of the National Museum in Brazil was founded, directed by Louis Couty (1854–1884), a student of Claude Bernard and Alfred Vulpian, and João Batista de Lacerda (1846–1915) (Quintanilha and Murasse, 2004). Concerning Bois-Reymond, his experimental work with electric fish illustrates how an exotic organism is inserted in the production of neuroscience knowledge, also illustrated here through a letter written by him to the Emperor (Figure 1).