Chair Of Medicine Research Articles

A Cardiologist Remembers

A CARDIOLOGIST REMEMBERS DAVID SCHERF* Why Scherf? Others who have contributed more to cardiology might better pre-empt this page than I. But the accident ofassociation with great cardiologists shortly after World War I conveys an obligation to record the essential character oftheir achievements against the background ofthe time. Without this documentation, delightful facets oftheir presence become lost, the full significance oftheir contribution palls, and the assessment ofone's own work is incomplete. I was born and grew up in a modest merchant family in eastern Austria, which was colonized with Germans by EmperorJoseph II. There I went to the gymnasium and remember vividly one day in December, 1916, when, just as the mathematics teacher was writing on the blackboard the formula cos (alpha + beta) = . . . , the school bell rang and cannon firewas heard. Shortly afterward the Russians took the town. The Austrians reoccupied it six weeks later, but when a new Russian offensive threatened my mother took my sister and me on a strenuous trip over the Carpathian mountain passes to Hungary, whence we traveled to Vienna. This was a wise move, because when the Russians again took the town all men between sixteen and sixty who could eventually serve in the army were transported to Siberia. In Vienna I finished the gymnasium and graduated from the medical faculty ofthe university in 1922. "The great possession ofany university is its great names" [1]. Vienna, the proud possessor of Wenckebach, Winterberg, and Rothberger, fulfilled Osier's definition and became in the ten years following World War I a world center of cardiology. The work of these men represented fundamental discoveries which were not only universally accepted but remain undisputed today. Now their names are familiar principally to those interested in the history of cardiology. Only Wenckebach is * Present address: 55 East 86th Street, New York, New York 10028. 615 widely known to the present generation, because a particular disturbance ofthe cardiac rhythm which he discovered is named after him. K. F. Wenckebach, as professor ofmedicine, occupied one ofthe three chairs ofmedicine at the medical school ofthe University ofVienna. The other two professors were Chvostek, an unusually gifted lecturer, and Ortner, known for his work on differential diagnosis ofinternal diseases and for his brilliant description ofabdominal angina. H. Winterberg, an associate of Wenckebach, headed the cardiac ward of his institution, the first medical clinic. CJ. Rothberger was chiefofthe Institute for Experimental Pathology. Wenckebach, who was of Dutch origin, had studied medicine at the University ofUtrecht, where he learned physiology under Engelmann. As a student, he soon discovered that he was color blind, a fact which he mentioned only to his friends and to pupils who were close to him. This defect forced him to abandon his favorite subjects ofembryology and hematology . When, after marriage, economic reasons led him into practice, he cared for inmates ofa home for the aged, who, ofcourse, presented many disturbances ofheart rhythm. One day, while listening to the heart sounds ofan old lady, he heard an irregularity ofthe heart rhythm which fascinated him so much that he listened motionless for about twenty minutes. Because at that time direct auscultation was used with the ear directly on the chest ofthepatients, the oldlady was sure that the good-looking young doctor had fallen asleep on her bosom. The rhythm which he heard reminded him of the frog experiments which he had so often seen in the laboratory ofEngelmann, who had formulated the laws ofcompensatory pauses by stimulating the frog heart with electrical shocks. After registering the radial pulse tracings of this patient, Wenckebach found that the intervals corresponded with those found after extrasystoles in the frog heart. In this manner, in 1899, Wenckebach demonstrated that the intermittent pulse known as an ominous sign for centuries could result from extrasystoles resembling those extra beats known to Marrey in his investigations on the refractory phase. Cushny made the same discovery simultaneously, and several years later, with the aid ofthejugular venous pulse, Mackenzie showed that extrasystoles may arise in both the atria and the ventricles. This discovery led to the realization that extrasystoles were not invariably a sign of serious heart disease and that the "intermittent pulse" may often be seen in the...

Medicine and science--a commission on medicines?--private practice.

LORD Platt, who was president of the Royal College of Physicians during the years when its beautiful new home was being built in Regents Park, delivered this year's Harveian Oration before the College on October 18. Having spent many years as a professor of clinical medicine, he chose to take as his theme the relation between medicine and science.The scientific revolution of the last few decades had led to a proliferation of chairs of medicine and therapeutics and to a vast increase in the volume of research. But how many of the real therapeutic advances could be attributed to . . .

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE: THIRD CHAIR OF MEDICINE

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 1, Issue 17 p. 733-734 University Intelligence UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE: THIRD CHAIR OF MEDICINE First published: 01 April 1966 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1966.tb72780.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume1, Issue17April 1966Pages 733-734 RelatedInformation

The Drug Problem

IT was appropriate that Sir Derrick Dunlop should have chosen to speak on the drug problem when giving the Croonian Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians. Since retiring from the chair of therapeutics and clinical medicine at Edinburgh, he has been chairman of the Safety of Drugs Committee appointed by the Ministry of Health, and he acknowledged that the problem is both complex and perplexing and full of conflicting interests. He said that a pharmacologist had defined a drug as a substance that, when injected into a rat, would produce a scientific paper. From the clinical point of view . . .

The First American Medical School Was in Mexico

To the Editor:— The points have been fairly well clarified in a book of mine which summarizes the medical historical events in Latin America during the colonial period,Historiografia de la Medicina Colonial Hispano Americana, Mexico, 1953. The University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, was founded by Philip II on May 12, 1551. It was thought until quite recently that the University of Mexico had been founded by the same king in September of the same year, 1551. However, M. Careno, in his bookLa Real y Pontificia Universidad de Mexico, 1536-1865, Mexico, 1961, proves that Philip II issued a proclamation on April 30, 1547, establishing the University of Mexico. On medical teaching there is also a Mexican priority. The university began medical examinations in 1553, and the Chair of Medicine was formally established on Jan 7, 1579. The Chair of Medicine in the University of San Marcos, Lima,

CLAUDE BERNARD ON ANIMAL HEAT--AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AND SOME ORIGINAL NOTES.

CLAUDE BERNARD ON ANIMAL HEAT—AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AND SOME ORIGINAL NOTES HEBBEL E. HOFF, ROGER GUILLEMIN, and EDOUARD SAKIZ* I. Introduction Some time in the third week of November, 1872, Claude Bernard wrote to his confidante Mme. Raffalovich that "last Monday, I was attacked at the Académie des Sciences by one ofmy colleagues. I was not alarmed by it, but annoyed, because it was so much time wasted" [1]. Ifit was an attack at all, it was by no means directed against Bernard personally , but it did challenge opinions and press for reassessment in a sphere that bore the decisive imprint ofBernard's own work, whichhe had every right to believe was no longer a point ofissue. Controversy was not new to Bernard, nor was it at all unusual in the Académie, to which he had been elected at the early age offorty-one and had served as President in 1869. But it must have been irksome to Bernard to have to givefull andformalreply to objectionswhich, aswillbe seen, so completely lacked objective scientific foundation. His antagonist, Jean Baptiste Bouillaud, was a close colleague in the Académie—a member, like him, ofthe Section on Medicine and Surgery —and the Professor ofClinical Medicine at the Faculty ofMedicine. Born in the Charentes in 1796, and completing his medical education by 1823, Bouillaud had gained an early reputation by editing in 1824 a new edition ofthe Traité des Maladies du Cœur ofhis master Bertin, who gave full testimony to the brilliance ofhis pupil and ample credit for the new material that Bouillaud brought to the work [2]. This material was nothing less than the early evidence ofBouillaud's perception ofthe syndrome * Department ofPhysiology, Baylor University College ofMedicine, Houston, Texas. This work was supported in part by USPHS Grant GM-06518.03Al. Weare grateful to Professeur M. Bataillon, President, Collège de France, for permission to utilize this material from the Archives ofthe Collège de France. 347 ofendocarditis, and in particular of his recognition of the association between rheumatic fever and endocarditis. Within the next few years a series of volumes under Bouillaud's direct authorship established his primacy in this field to a degree that has never been seriously challenged and within a few years won him the Chair ofMedicine held previously by Laënnec and Corvisart [3-12]. He was one ofthe early physicians to take an interest in applying to medicine the statistical approach advocated by Laplace, and he was equally early in his interest in cerebral localization, pointing out the paramount symptom ofincoordination in animals after experimentaldecerebellation [13]. He remainedan adherent ofthedoctrines ofBroussais long after these had been generally abandoned, and in therapeutics he was a strong advocate ofrepeated venesections. By the 1840's his medical output was largely at an end. A friend of Thiers, he was elected to the National Assembly from his native Charente and voted consistently with the Left. After the revolution of1848 and the establishment ofthe short-lived Second Republic, he was named Dean of the Faculty ofMedicine but was removed from office within the year by a new Minister ofPublic Instruction. The reason was possibly the changing complexion of French politics, as the country moved toward the Coup d'État of1851 and the Empire ofNapoleon III. But it may also have been because ofa certain rigidity that made it impossible for him to regularize the accounts ofhis predecessor by quiet administrative expedients, which the Minister quite obviously desired [14]. Not until 1869 was he elected to the Académie des Sciences [15]. The record shows that he attended meetings with regularity, spoke frequently on matters relating to the heart and nervous system, particularly on speech and aphasia, served on many committees , and remained active in this way until his death in 1881, at the age ofeighty-five. By his own request, he was not accorded the traditional Éloge at his funeral [16]. II. Controversy over the Origin ofAnimal Heat How Bouillaud came to consider the matter ofanimal heat is uncertain. One contemporary note has it that he was, in fact, replying to an earlier— and as yet undiscovered—report on intracapillary combustion addressed to the Académie by Pigeon...

THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE: NEW CHAIR OF MEDICINE

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 2, Issue 3 p. 123-123 Naval, Military and Air Force THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE: NEW CHAIR OF MEDICINE First published: 01 July 1964 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1964.tb128159.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume2, Issue3July 1964Pages 123-123 RelatedInformation

Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science by Werner Heisenberg (review)

students at theJohns Hopkins Medical School, but it was not finished until after his retirement from the Chair ofMedicine at Stanford University. Thedesignand formatofthevolumeenhancethereader'spleasure, andthe supplementary reading lists and good Index make it a valuable reference work. C. Pttilltp Miller University ofChicago BiologicalAspectsofCancer. ByJulian Huxley. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958. Pp. 156. $3.75. This readable and instructive book emphasizes mainly the fact that cancer is not a biological entity but a term used for many distinct diseases. The author considers these diseases biological phenomena and characterizes the relationship ofcancer to a number of fields ofpresent-day biology, which include comparative tumorigenesis, genetics, virology , and development and metabolism (epigenetics). One special value ofthe book lies in the description ofthe neoplastic growths which occur in animals and plants as well as in humans. Many aspects ofthe similarities and differences ofthese tumors are discussed. The author states in the Preface that he became intrigued by the subject while preparing a series oflectures for the Sloan-Kettering Institute. He was invited in order to provide a "fresh and outside approach," even though he admitted to "lacking any detailed knowledge" in this field. The book reflects such an origin. It contains large numbers of facts and hypotheses which provide an interesting and probably quite complete survey ofcurrent ideas on cancer and the problems ofuncontrolled growth processes. However, this assemblage offacts and hypotheses is more that ofa reporter than ofa critic and innovator . It is difficult at best for any biologist to develop critical opinions regarding all the theories concerned with neoplastic growth, but it appears to this reviewer that the author 's lack ofpersonal participation in cancer research puts him at a disadvantage with respect to his sources. The same reservation must also hold for the way the facts were chosen, and one might therefore question whether this particular selection is a valid representation ofthe facts. Perhaps this book cannot tell too much to the cancer specialist, but it will certainly serve as a suitable introduction to the problems ofcarcinogenesis for many biologists who do not work directly on the cancer problem. H. S. Anker University ofChicago Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. By Werner Heisenberg. New York: Harper & Bros., 1958. Pp. xv-f-206. $4.00. This Volume XIX of "World Perspectives," planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, begins with a seven-page description ofthe purposes of the series, written by Miss Anshen in flowery style. One cannot help wondering whether Mr. Heisenberg saw it before the book was issued. The book proper opens with a twenty-seven-page Intro246 Book Reviews Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1939 duction by Professor F. S. C. Northrop of Yale to orient the reader and assess the significance for philosophy ofthe conceptual revolution brought about by the discoveries and theories ofmoderi) physics, particularly the significance ofHeisenberg's own contributions . Professor Northrop is, in general, very sympathetic with Heisenberg's point ofview but by no means slavishly accepts everything. I suspect that the reader familiar with Professor Northrop's previous philosophical writings will gain more from the introductory chapter than the reader without such a background. The body ofthe book comprises the Giffbrd Lectures given at the University of St. Andrews during the winter term 1955-56. Appropriate to the popular character ofthe audience of the GifFord Lectures, the exposition is throughout completely non-mathematical ; there is not a single equation in the entire book. The first four chapters lay the physical background, one on the history ofquantum theory going back to Planck's invention ofthe quantum ofaction, h, to resolve the dilemmas in radiation theory brought to light by Rayleigh andJeans. The major part ofthis chapter is occupied, inevitably in any history ofquantum theory, with an account of the evolution of the ideas of Niels Bohr, and leads up to a chapter on the "Copenhagen" interpretation ofquantum theory— that is, the interpretation ofBohrand his school. Heisenberg identifies himselfcompletely with the Copenhagen interpretation, as is natural in view ofthe magnitude ofhis own contributions to it. This interpretation he describes as internally consistent and as having "finally led to a complete and, as many physicists believe, satisfactory clarification ofthe situation." Because quantum theory demands...

VETERINARY SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Australian Veterinary JournalVolume 27, Issue 10 p. 285-286 VETERINARY SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND CHAIR OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE First published: October 1951 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1951.tb04982.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume27, Issue10October 1951Pages 285-286 RelatedInformation

EDITORIAL

THE American Academy of Pediatrics this year lost the full time services of Dr. John P. Hubbard who has accepted the chair of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Pennsylvania. To many members of the Academy it will seem strange not to have the mailman occasionally present them with a letter from John, urging them, more or less gently, to direct or indirect action furthering the interests of the Academy and the cause of child health. In the past four years he has carried through the enormous task of directing the Academy Survey of Child Health Services and subsequently sweated through the formative stages of the ICH Committee and the efforts to follow up the Study with constructive action.

ADDITIONAL NOTES ON OSLER IN PHILADELPHIA

BY THE year 1884, when William Osler had completed exactly one-half his life span of 70 years, the lines of his medical development had become established. His philosophic viewpoints, his special interests, his systematic habits of work, his ability to think constructively and penetratingly, and to set forth the results in an arresting style, were already bringing him a well deserved reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not surprising, then, that when the chair of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania was vacated by the promotion of William Pepper to the professorship of medicine, Osler should have been chosen as his successor. The circumstances of his selection were about as follows: A name had been proposed by the faculty to the board of trustees after what seemed to some an insufficient consideration of the subject. According to Minis Hays, the matter came up in a conversation

Psychological Medicine in Glasgow : Prof. T. Ferguson Rodger

DR. T. FERGUSON RODGER has been chosen as the first occupant of the newly founded chair of psychological medicine in the University of Glasgow. Dr. Rodger graduated in science and medicine at Glasgow in 1927–29 and holds the diploma in psychological medicine of the University of London. During 1931–32 he worked at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a pupil of Adolf Meyer. From 1933 until 1939 he was senior assistant at Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital (Gartnavel), and an assistant to the lecturer in psychiatry in the University. Throughout the War he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as consulting psychiatrist at Headquarters, Land Forces, South-East Asia, and at General Headquarters, India. Latterly, he has been a commissioner of the General Board of Control (which functions under the Lunacy, Mental Treatment and Mental Deficiency Acts). Dr. Rodger has specialized in psychosomatic medicine. He was responsible for research into the methods of selecting officers for the army. He has also published work on fibrositis and on night-blindness.

Chair of Medicine at Sheffield: Dr. C. H. Stuart-Harris

As a result of the recommendations of the Interdepartmental Committee on Medical Schools appointed in 1942 under the chairmanship of Sir William Goodenough, Government grants have made possible the establishment of full-time university professorships in medicine, surgery, midwifery and other branches of clinical medicine, and for the proper staffing of the corresponding departments.

Tropical Medicine at Liverpool

LIEUT.-COLONEL B. G. MAEGRAITH, who is at present in charge of the Army Malaria Research Unit, has succeeded, at the age of thirty-seven, the late Prof. Warrington Yorke in the Alfred Jones chair of tropical medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. After graduating at the University of Adelaide in 1930, Prof. Maegraith went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and there took his B.Sc, D.Phil, and M.A. He was awarded a Beit Fellowship and became fellow of Exeter College and tutor in physiology. Later, he acted as dean of the Oxford University Medical School. Earlier in the War he served as consulting physician and assistant director of pathology in the West African Command and there studied, with Brigadier G. M. Findlay and N. H. Martin, the factors present in tissues and blood which may produce or inhibit lysis of the blood cells. In Australia, Prof. Maegraith had made a hæmatological study of the aborigines, and later he studied hæmolysis.

British Medicine and the Göttingen Medical School

IN a recent paper (Bull. Hist. Med., 14, 449; 1943) Prof. Max Neuburger remarks that during the eighteenth century inadequate facilities for teaching and research prevented most of the medical schools in Germany from furthering either medical training or scientific research. On the other hand, the medical school at Vienna and the Medical Faculty at Göttingen were remarkable exceptions, and owed their celebrity to two famous pupils of Boerhaave, namely, Gerhard van Swieten at Vienna and Albrecht v. Haller at Göttingen. George II, who founded the University of Göttingen in 1734, invited Haller to fill the vacant chair of medicine, which included anatomy, surgery and botany. Haller had previously spent some time in London, where he made the acquaintance of several English physicians and surgeons such as Sir Hans Sloane, John Pringle and William Cheselden, and frequently quoted British writers, notably Stephen Hales, John Mayow and Thomas Willis, in his own works. During the seventeen years when he resided at Göttingen, he exercised a great influence on the University, being responsible for the erection of an anatomical theatre, a botanical garden and a lying-in institution. He also founded a scientific society of which he was the first and permanent president, and a scientific journal to which he made more than a thousand contributions. Between 1739 and 1744 he completed the six-volume edition of Boerhaave's "Institutiones", for which he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society. He was also author of numerous other works on anatomy, physiology, medicine, surgery and botany. In 1739 he was appointed physician in ordinary to George II, who conferred a knighthood upon him and made him one of his consultant physicians. Owing to reasons of health, he left Göttingen for Berne in 1753. Many of Haller's successors at Göttingen, as Prof. Neuburger points out, had studied in London. Among them may be mentioned Roederer, Sömmering, Thomas Young and Blumenbach.

Edward Janeway (1841–1911)

DR. EDWARD GAMALIEL JANEWAY, a distinguished New York consulting physician, was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, on August 31, 1841. He studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, and qualified in 1864. He spent some time after qualification at the Bellevue Hospital, New York, in the study of morbid anatomy, which formed an excellent foundation for his clinical work. In 1872 he was appointed professor of morbid anatomy and in 1881 of psychiatry and neurology at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, where he succeeded Austin Flint in 1886 in the chair of internal medicine and held this post until 1892. From 1898, on union of the Bellevue Hospital Medical College with New York University, until 1907, he was clinical director of the amalgamated institution. In addition to general medicine he took a keen interest in public health, especially in the campaign against tuberculosis, and was for some time president of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. He died at Summit, New Jersey, on February 10, 1911. He made numerous contributions to periodical literature, but was not the author of any book. His son, Dr. Theodore Caldwell Janeway (1872–1917), professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, was the author of a book entitled “The Clinical Study of Blood–Pressure” (1914), which was a pioneer work on the subject.

University Events

LEEDS.—Dr. P. L. Sutherland has been elected to the chair of forensic medicine in succession to the late Prof. Maxwell Telling. Prof. Sutherland, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, has held an appointment in the University as lecturer in the pathology of industrial diseases since 1920. He has been since 1910 pathologist to the West Riding County Council, a post which he will continue to hold.

James Gregory (1638–1675)*

IN the early seventeenth century, two brothers, Alexander and David Anderson of Aberdeen, rose to mathematical distinction. Alexander, who went to Paris as professor of mathematics, became the friend and expositor of Vieta, while David, commonly called 'Davie-do-a'-thing', became the Archimedes of Aberdeen, constructed the spire of St. Nicholas Church, and removed 'Knock Mait land', a dangerous submerged rock, from the harbour by harnessing it to the tide. His daughter Janet married the Rev. John Gregory, of Drumoak on Deeside, twelve miles from Aberdeen, and thereafter for two hundred years their descendants occupied the chairs of either mathematics, medicine or philosophy in an unbroken sequence at Scottish universities, always with vitality and distinction.

Tercentenary of Two French Botanists

THE year 1638 saw the birth of two notable French botanists, Guy-Crescent Fagon, who was born in Paris on May 11, 1638, and Pierre Magnol, who was born at Montpellier on June 8, 1638. Both were physicians, both were connected with botanical gardens and both were members of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Fagon was a nephew of Guy de la Brosse (died 1641) who first suggested and eventually, in 1626, laid out the "Jardin Royal de herbes medicinales"in Paris, the site of which was a piece of waste ground where the refuse of centuries had collected. It is now the Jardin des Plantes. After taking his degree in medicine in 1664, Fagon offered to procure plants for the garden, and through Antoine Vallot (1594–1671) the superintendent, who was also physician to the King, was appointed to travel in the Alps, Pyrenees, Auvergne and other parts. He afterwards became professor of botany and chemistry in the garden and in 1698 was made director. It was through him that two famous botanists, Joseph Tournefort (1661–1708) and Charles Plumier (164–1704) were sent on collecting expeditions, one to the Levant and the other to America. He wrote on tobacco, cinchona and other matters, and held high office as a doctor. He died in Paris on March 11, 1718. Magnol was associated with Montpellier ail his life. He took his degree there, assisted the professor of botany, in 1694 was given the chair of medicine and three years later was made director of the botanic garden, which had been founded aboub 1558. His writings referred mainly to the plants which grew in the neighbourhood of his native city. He died on May 21, 1715, leaving a son, Antoine, who followed in his footsteps. The genus Magnolia was named after him, by his countryman Plumier.

Leopold von Schrötter (1837–1908)

A COMMITTEE of prominent Viennese physicians and laryngologists has recently been formed to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the man, equally illustrious as laryngologist and physician, whose full name and titles were Hofrat Prof. Dr. Leopold Bitter Schrotter von Kristelli. He was born at Graz on February 5, 1837, the son of the eminent chemist who discovered amorphous phosphorus. He studied medicine at Vienna, where he qualified in 1861. From an early stage in his career he took a keen interest not only in diseases of the chest, which he had an unrivalled opportunity of studying under Prof. Skoda, the great authority on this subject, but also in laryngoscopy, the importance of which to the physician he was the first to emphasize. During his subsequent career he occupied the important positions of director of the first laryngological clinic to be established and later the chair of clinical medicine in the University of Vienna. His principal work was a book on diseases of the larynx, trachea, nose and throat, which for a long time was the standard publication on this subject. He also contributed important articles to various systems of medicine on diseases of the heart and pericardium and syphilis of the larynx. Lastly, he deserves recognition as being one of the first to introduce sanatoria for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, and to combat the pessimistic outlook of the medical profession regarding the cure of this disease. His death took place on April 22, 1908.