Over the Edge and Back

Although by this time Mayer was losing ground in his battle against discouragement,
perseverance still prevailed. In 1846, he wrote another paper (this one, on
celestial mechanics, anticipated workdone much later by William Thomson),
and again had to accept private publication.
Professional problems were now compounded by family and health problems.
During the years 1846 to 1848, three of Mayer’s children died, and his marriage
began to deteriorate. Finally, in 1850, he suffered a nearly fatal breakdown. An
attackof insomnia drove him to a suicide attempt; the attempt was unsuccessful,
but from the depths of his despair Mayer might have seen this as still another
failure.
In an effort to improve his condition, Mayer voluntarily entered a sanatorium.
Treatment there made the situation worse, and finally he was committed to an
asylum, where his handling was at best careless and at times brutal. The diagnosis
of his mental and physical condition became so bleakthat the medical
authorities could offer no hope, and he was released from the institution in 1853.
It may have been Mayer’s greatest achievement that he survived, and even
partially recovered from, this appalling experience. After his release, he returned
to Heilbronn, resumed his medical practice in a limited way, and for about ten
years deliberately avoided all scientific activity. In slow stages, and with occasional
relapses, his health began to return. That Mayer could, by an act of will
it seems, restore himself to comparatively normal health, demonstrated, if nothing
else did, that his mental condition was far from hopelessly unbalanced. To
abandon entirely for ten years an effort that had become an obsession was plainly
an act of sanity.
The period of Mayer’s enforced retirement, the 1850s, was a time of great
activity in the development of thermodynamics. Energy was established as a
concept, and the energy conservation principle was accepted by most theorists.
This workwas done mostly by James Joule in England, by Rudolf Clausius in
Germany, and by William Thomson and Macquorn Rankine in Scotland, with
little appreciation of Mayer’s efforts. Not only was Mayer’s theory ignored during
this time, but in 1858 Mayer himself was reported by Liebig to have died in an
asylum. Protests from Mayer did not prevent the appearance of his official death
notice in Poggendorff’s Handwo¨ rterbuch.