Adolf Bingel (internist, 1901)

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Adolf Abraham Gustav Bingel (born July 5, 1901 in Barmen , † April 23, 1982 in Houston , Texas ) was a German-American internist , neurologist and psychiatrist . He pioneered electroconvulsive therapy for psychiatric disorders and aerospace medicine .

Life

Bingel was born in Barmen (since 1929 in the Wuppertal district since 1929 ) as the son of a businessman. After graduating from high school, he studied medicine in Freiburg from 1920 and later in Marburg . He passed his doctoral examination in October 1925 at the Medical Faculty of Marburg. In July 1926 he received his medical license.

Already during the specialist training for internal medicine in Frankfurt am Main and Bremen he had a special interest in neurology . From 1931 he worked temporarily in the neurological department of the General Hospital St. Georg in Hamburg , whose management he took over provisionally in 1934 after a research stay at the Physiological Institute of the University of Leipzig. In 1935 he moved to the Neurological Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf. In the same year he married Elisabeth Gättsche, who had a doctorate in medicine.

In March 1937, Bingel took the position of senior physician at the Psychiatric and Nervous Clinic of the University of Erlangen under Friedrich Meggendorfer . After completing his habilitation , he became a private lecturer in psychiatry and neurology there in May 1940 . appointed

As a medical officer in the Air Force, Bingel was awarded the First Class War Merit Cross with Swords on September 1, 1943. In addition to his work as head of the aviation investigation center in Norway, he was ordered in autumn 1944 as the only psychiatrist to act as a substitute for the business of the "military service medical officer". In January 1945, Bingel was transferred back to Germany and released from his university position by the military government in November of the same year, but was subsequently assigned to the aeronautical medical staff of the American armed forces under Hubertus Strugold in Heidelberg . He was classified as a follower by the Heidelberg Chamber of Justice in 1948.

Bingel had already been shipped to the USA as part of Operation Paperclip in 1946 . In 1947 he received an official invitation from the United States to specialize in medical and scientific work at the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolf Field, Texas.

From 1950 he was a senior physician at Brooke Army Hospital Fort Sam / Houston . In 1954 he became chief physician of the neurological department at VA Hospital in Houston and Associate Professor of Neurology at the College of Medicine at Baylor University in Houston.

On September 28, 1957, Bingel was awarded the title “Lecturer a. D. “awarded.

Bingel died on April 23, 1982 at the age of 81 in Houston, Texas.

Act

As part of his habilitation thesis, Bingel carried out investigations into the circadian rhythm of the electrodermogram (EDG). He observed fluctuations in the electrical cell boundary charges, which depended on the time of day, but also on the psychological state of the examined.

After preliminary work by Cerletti and Bini in Italy, Bingel approached Siemens-Reiniger-Werke in Erlangen in September 1939 and asked whether the company wanted to build a "corresponding apparatus" "to check the Italian work". A long-term cooperation developed from this, from which a device for inducing convulsions and (in cooperation with Friedrich Meggendorfer) the first electroconvulsive therapy at the Erlangen University and Mental Hospital emerged in 1939. Bingel and Meggendorfer accompanied the application in several scientific papers.

Later Bingel worked for Diagnostic Tests in aviation medicine , to the oxygen supply in the aerospace and Neuroendocrinology .

Fonts (selection)

  • A. Bingel: Relationship of diabetes to diseases of the biliary tract. In: Münch Med Wochenschrift. 12, 1930, pp. 481-482.
  • A. Bingel: Experience with insulin and cardiazole treatment for schizophrenia. In: Psychiatric-Neurological Weekly. 40, 1938, pp. 299-301.
  • A. Bingel: About the daily rhythm of the mentally ill shown on the electrodermogram. In: Journal for the whole of neurology and psychiatry. 170, 1940, pp. 404-440.
  • A. Bingel, F. Meggendorfer: About the first German attempts at an electroconvulsive treatment for mental illnesses. In: Psychiatric-Neurological Weekly. 42 (5), 1940, pp. 41-43.
  • A. Bingel, H. Maier-Leibnitz: Investigations of handwriting-pressure. In: Q Res Rep. 3, Oct 1947, p. 12. PMID 18909050 .
  • I. Schmidt, A. Bingel: Effect of oxygen lack on color saturation thresholds. In: Q Res Rep. 60, Jan 1st-31st Mar 1948, p. 12. PMID 18912246 .
  • A. Bingel: Reading epilepsy. In: Neurology. 7 (11), Nov 1957, pp. 752-756. PMID 13483831 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f B. Braun, J. Kornhuber: Adolf Abraham Gustav Bingel (1901–1982): pioneer of electroconvulsive treatment in Germany. In: Fortschr Neurol Psychiatr. 81 (10), Oct 2013, pp. 586-591. doi: 10.1055 / s-0033-1350581 PMID 24081519 .
  2. ↑ a b Birgit Braun: Friedrich Meggendorfer - Person and Ethics of a Psychiatrist in National Socialism. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-515-11964-1 .
  3. ↑ L. Rzesnitzek, S. Lang: 'Electroshock Therapy' in the Third Reich. In: Med Hist. 61 (1), Jan 2017, pp. 66-88. doi: 10.1017 / mdh.2016.101 . PMID 27998332 . PMC 5206950 (free full text).
personal data
SURNAME Bingel, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bingel, Adolf Abraham Gustav (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American internist, neurologist and psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Barmen
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1982
Place of death Houston , Texas