Arnold Adolph Berthold

Who was Arnold Adolph Berthold?

Arnold Adolph Berthold or Arnold Adolf Berthold was a German physiologist and zoologist. He studied medicine in Göttingen in 1819 and wrote his thesis under the direction of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Berthold became a private lecturer in 1825 and began to teach physiology at the University of Göttingen where he spent the rest of his career. He is known as a pioneer in endocrinology due to his experiments on the role of the gonads in the development of secondary sexual characteristics. He published important works on reptiles and amphibians as well as on avian physiology. In the field of entomology, he authored Natürliche Familien des Thierreichs.

Berthold is particularly famous for his work on endocrinology. It has been argued that Berthold, in 1849, was the first to engage in the formal study of behavioral endocrinology when he performed ground breaking experiments with chicken castration. Berthold noted that the male chickens were: aggressive; had pronounced comb and wattle; muscles were more developed; crows; copulate with hens. On the other hand, Berthold noted that the female chickens were: not aggressive; had no comb and wattle; did not crow; did not copulate with hens.