Missouri Landmarks

The Joseph Erlanger House, St. Louis, Missouri

The Joseph Erlanger House was the home of Joseph Erlanger, an American doctor and physiologist who was recognized with the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1944.   It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Joseph Erlanger

Erlanger was born on January 5, 1874, at San Francisco, California.  He completed his B.S. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed his M.D. in 1899 from the Johns Hopkins University.

Erlanger worked at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD; at Washington University in St. Louis; and at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1944, while on the faculty of Washington University.

Erlanger’s chief research was  done in electrophysiology and the physiology of the circulatory system.  He studied the principles of sphygmomanometry and devised a recording sphygmomanometer, with which he studied the influence of pulse pressure on kidney secretion and on orthostatic albuminuria.

Later, he devised a clamp with which the auriculo-ventricular bundle of the  heart could be reversibly blocked, and with this device he studied the problems associated with the functions of this bundle.

In 1922, Erlanger adapted the cathode-ray oscillograph for the study of nerve action potentials, and this led to the work for which Erlanger and Gasser were given the Nobel Prize.  Erlanger also worked on metabolism of dogs with shortened intestines, on traumatic shock, and on the mechanism of the production of sound in arteries.

He died on December 5, 1965 at St. Louis, Missouri.  His home is now a National Historic Landmark.