Learning from history: why we should remember the German University in Breslau (now Wrocław).

Abstract

In its day (about 1830–1920), the medical school of the University of Breslau was one of the most famous in the world, yet today it is almost forgotten. In the Dictionary of Medical Eponyms ,1 we find 33 eponyms related to doctors working in Breslau. The university was founded in 1811 by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and eventually named the ‘Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau’. Why did it become so important? When Germany was finally united in 1870, Breslau was the chief town of Silesia and Silesia was an immensely prosperous steel and coal mining area. The population of Silesia was ethnically diverse: Germans, Poles, and Jews. For the emancipated Jews, medicine was one of the few professions open that promised a possibility of social advancement. Entry to the university for Poles and Jews was reduced after the Kulturkampf of Bismarck (1871–1876) and completely stopped once the Nazis were in power (1933). In that period the German-speaking world was the acknowledged leader in the application of modern science to medicine. In contrast Britain’s only major contribution was Lister’s introduction of antisepsis, an advance that was widely accepted in the German world while Lister was still being ignored at home. Among the many German advances, we might mention Koch’s demonstration of the microbial origin of many diseases (Koch’s postulates) and Ehrlich’s development of histological stains — on the back of the German dye industry — and, following on from this, of antibiotic chemotherapy. In what areas did the University of Breslau excel? I would like to focus on two: surgery and neurology. The leading surgeon was Jan Mikulicz-Radecki (1850–1905). He had a German father and a Polish mother. When asked what his nationality was, he would answer, ‘surgeon’. …