Albert Neisser

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Albert Neisser
Toni Neisser (Fritz Erler)

Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser (born January 22, 1855 in Schweidnitz , † July 30, 1916 in Breslau ) was a German dermatologist , bacteriologist and social hygienist. He was best known as the discoverer of the pathogen causing gonorrhea .

Life

Alber Neisser was born as the son of the Jewish doctor Moritz Neisser (1820-1896), secret medical councilor in Breslau and Charlottenbrunn , and Louise Lossen (1819-1855), who came from a Berlin entrepreneurial family. Since his mother died before he was one year old, Neisser was raised by his stepmother. In 1883 Albert Neisser married the philanthropist Toni Kauffmann (1861–1918). The couple remained childless.

After attending primary school in Münsterberg , Neisser entered the humanistic St. Maria Magdalena grammar school in Breslau . It was here that he and Paul Ehrlich passed the school leaving examination in 1872. In the same year he began studying medicine at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau. He later spent a clinical semester at the University of Erlangen . 1877 he put his state examination and was in Wroclaw with a thesis on the tapeworm disease to Dr. med. PhD . His teachers were the internist Anton Biermer and Rudolf Heidenhain , Julius Cohnheim , Carl Weigert and Carl Julius Salomonsen (1847-1924).

Then Neisser worked for two years as an assistant doctor at the newly founded Breslau dermatology clinic with Oskar Simon (1845–1882). He completed his habilitation in Leipzig in 1880 and was appointed private lecturer . In 1882 he took over the management of dermatology in Breslau as associate professor . In 1889 he was one of the founders of the German Dermatological Society with Joseph Doutrelepont , Moriz Kaposi , Edmund Lesser and Philipp Josef Pick . The new dermatological clinic planned by Neisser in Breslau was opened in 1892. In 1902 he founded the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases, in 1907 he was given the full professorship .

Paul Linser is one of his students .

In 1879 Neisser succeeded in the groundbreaking discovery of the pathogen causing gonorrhea (gonorrhea), which he called "Micrococcus", later renamed "Gonococcus" by Ehrlich ( Neisseria gonorrhoeae , Neisser's diplococci). In the same year Neisser went on a research trip to Norway to examine more than 100 leprosy cases . Using a special staining method, he was able to detect the leprosy bacillus, which had been observed by the Norwegian bacteriologist Gerhard Armauer Hansen in 1873 , and clearly identify it as the cause of the disease.

In addition to syphilis , other areas of work included lupus diseases, where he first pointed out a distinction between tuberculous ( lupus vulgaris : skin tuberculosis ) and non-tuberculous forms ( lupus pernio ). Neisser did not find the causes of syphilis, but made significant contributions to the mode of infection through experiments with monkeys that he carried out in Java (1905/1907). Joint studies with August von Wassermann , which led to the development of a detection reaction for syphilis pathogens (1906) in the blood serum ( Wassermann reaction ), are considered milestones in syphilis diagnosis .

Neisser mainly dealt with diagnostics, therapy ( arsphenamine ) and prevention (prostitute problem) of sexually transmitted diseases, in addition, he also dealt with other skin diseases (lichenoid vitiligo , urticaria , skin tumors, skin infections, psoriasis , skin fungal diseases , pemphigus , eczema ).

Neisser's work was internationally recognized, and a large number of important dermatologists emerged from his school. He was a secret medical councilor, was awarded several medals and was a member of the Reich Health Council (1916). In 1886 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . With Edmund Lesser and Paul Gerson Unna he belongs to the "founding trio" of German dermatology.

Human experiments for syphilis research

Albert Neisser thought about new health and social policy strategies to combat sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis, and pleaded for the replacement of what he believed to be the ineffective moral police surveillance of prostitutes with purely medical surveillance. Albert Neisser caused one of the first German medical scandals when he infected hospital patients with syphilis in a human experiment in 1892 . In these experiments he looked for a serum against syphilis - analogous to the serum therapy for diphtheria developed by Emil von Behring . First of all, Neisser wanted to clarify the preliminary question as to whether the serum of syphilitic people is harmless to healthy people. At the time, the pathogen was still unknown, but Neisser assumed it was bacterial and therefore considered it unproblematic to inject cell-free blood serum from syphilis patients. He did this with eight women or girls, the youngest of them ten years old. Syphilis later developed in four patients. Neisser herself assumed that she had gotten the infection through prostitution because the prostitutes were young.

The scandal was triggered by an article by the later Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ludwig Quidde , who was also active in the anti-divisectionist movement, and discussed in the Prussian House of Representatives . On the one hand, this led to scientists showing solidarity with Neisser and collecting signatures for him, on the other hand, to a trial against Neisser. A public debate about ethical behavior and clinics and laboratories then took place between 1898 and 1901 in particular. It was perceived as particularly problematic that Neisser had also experimented on underage children without asking their parents' permission. In the process, the Göttingen criminal lawyer Carl Ludwig von Bar, as an expert, took the view that research experiments without the legally binding consent of the test subjects are punishable. On December 29, 1900, Neisser was found guilty of an official offense because he "vaccinated people admitted for healing with blood serum from syphilitic people or had them vaccinated without the consent of these people or their legal representatives". On the same day the Prussian Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs instructed the heads of clinics, polyclinics and other hospitals to only allow human experiments after detailed instruction and the express consent of the subjects. Experiments on minors were completely banned.

Art collector and patron

Villa Neisser , architect Grisebach

Neisser and his wife Toni were art lovers and patrons . The Villa Neisser was richly endowed with art treasures and a cultural center of the city of Wroclaw. The couple's circle of friends included the architect Hans Poelzig , the sculptor Theodor von Gosen , the composers Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss , the writer and later Nobel Prize winner Gerhart Hauptmann and the painter Eugen Spiro . In the villa there were numerous works of art by the artists Fritz and Erich Erler , including the portraits of the married couple Toni and Albert Neisser and famous guests of the villa. The collection also included pictures by Giovanni Segantini ( Noon in the Alps ), Arnold Böcklin ( triptych Venus Genetrix ), Oswald Achenbach , Hans Thoma , Frijts Thaulow , Eugen Spiro, and works of art by Constantin Meunier , Franz Stuck , Ignatius Taschner and Theodor von Gosen.

Publications

items

  • About a micrococcal shape peculiar to gonorrhea. In: Centralblatt for medical science. Vol. 28 (1879), pp. 497-500.
  • On the aetiology of leprosy. In: Annual report of the Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture. Vol. 57 (1880), pp. 65-70.
  • The micrococci of gonorrhea. In: German Medical Weekly . (DMW), Vol. 8 (1882), pp. 279-283, ISSN  0012-0472 .
  • The chronic infectious diseases of the skin. In: Heinrich Auspitz , Victor Babeș (ed.): Handbook of skin diseases. Vol. 1. Vogel Verlag, Leipzig 1883, pp. 560–723. (Handbook of Special Pathology and Therapy, Vol. 14)
  • About the shortcomings of the currently usual prostitute examinations. In: German Medical Weekly. (DMW), Vol. 16 (1890), pp. 834-837, ISSN  0012-0472 .
  • Eczema pathology. In: Archive for Dermatology and Syphilis / Supplement. Vol. 1 (1892), pp. 116-161.
  • My attempts to transmit syphilis to monkeys. In: German Medical Weekly. (DMW), Vol. 30 (1904), pp. 1369-1373, ISSN  0012-0472 .
  • Further information on the detection of specific syphilitic substances through complement anchoring. In: Journal of Hygiene and Infectious Diseases. Vol. 55 (1906) pp. 451-477, ISSN  0340-1782 (together with August von Wassermann , Carl Bruck and A. Schlucht).
  • About the new Ehrlich means. Open letter to the editor. In: German Medical Weekly . Volume 36, 1910, p. 1212 f.
  • Report on the research into syphilis carried out in Batavia and Breslau during the years 1905–1909 with financial aid from the German Reich. In: Works from the Imperial Health Office (supplements to the publications of the Imperial Health Office). Volume 37, Berlin 1911.
  • Is it really quite impossible to make prostitution harmless to health? In: German Medical Weekly . Volume 42, 1915, pp. 1385-1388.
  • About arsenophenylglycine and its use in treating syphilis. In: Arch. Dermatol. Syph. Volume 121, 1916, pp. 576-612.

Monographs

  • Echinococcal disease . Bernstein Verlag, Breslau 1877 (habilitation thesis).
  • About the importance of lupus disease and the need to combat it . Klinkhardt Verlag, Leipzig 1908.
  • Syphilis and Salvarsan . Springer Verlag, Berlin 1913.
  • Sexually transmitted diseases and how to combat them. Suggestions and demands for doctors, lawyers and sociologists . Verlag VDM Müller, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-0948-3 (reprint of the Berlin 1916 edition).

literature

Web links

Commons : Family of Neisser  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Albert Neisser on enzyklopaedie-dermatologie.de
  2. ↑ Albrecht Scholz: History of dermatology in Germany. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, etc. 1999, pp. 39-41
  3. ^ Lutz Sauerteig: Albert Neisser , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann (eds.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the 20th century , 1st edition CH Beck Munich 1995, 2nd edition Springer Heidelberg, Berlin et.al. 2001, 3rd edition Springer Heidelberg, Berlin et.al. 2006, pp. 237 + 238, print and online version ( ISBN 978-3-540-29584-6 or ISBN 978-3-540-29585-3 ).
  4. ↑ Barbara Elkeles: Medical human experiments towards the end of the 19th century and the Neisser case. Justification and criticism of a scientific method. In: Medical History Journal. Volume 20, 1985, pp. 135-148.
  5. ^ A b Axel C. Hüntelmann: Paul Ehrlich. Life, research, economics, networks . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0867-1 , p. 143.
  6. ↑ Albert Neisser: What do we know about serum therapy for syphilis and what can we hope for from it? quoted from: Nicolas Pethes u. a. (Ed.): Human experiments. An anthology 1750-2000 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-29450-5 , pp. 595-599, here p. 595.
  7. ↑ Albert Neisser: What do we know about serum therapy for syphilis and what can we hope for from it? quoted from: Nicolas Pethes u. a. (Ed.): Human experiments. An anthology 1750-2000 , pp. 595–599, here p. 598.
  8. ↑ Axel C. Hüntelmann: Paul Ehrlich. Life, research, economies, networks , p. 142.
  9. ↑ Florian G. Mildenberger : No salvation through arsenic? The salvarsand debate and its consequences. In: Fachprosaforschung - Grenzüberreitungen 8/9, 2012/2013, pp. 327–390, here: p. 329.
  10. ↑ Barbara Elkeles: Meizinische Menschenversuche towards the end of the 19th century and the Neisser case. Justification and criticism of a scientific method. In: Medical History Journal. Volume 20, 1985, pp. 135-148.
  11. ↑ quoted from: Nicolas Pethes u. a. (Ed.): Human experiments. An anthology 1750-2000 , p. 516.
  12. ↑ quoted from: Nicolas Pethes u. a. (Ed.): Human experiments. An anthology 1750-2000 , p. 599.
  13. ↑ Nicolas Pethes et al. a. (Ed.): Human experiments. An anthology 1750-2000 , pp. 515f.
  14. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Bar every morality. The unholy alliance of healing and killing , with versions in English. Language, in: University of Heidelberg: Ruperto Carola 2 (2013) pp. 95–101, here: Beginning discussion: the "Neisser case" p. 96; Barely any morals 2013
  15. ↑ Marius Winzeler: Jewish collectors and patrons in Breslau - from donation to the "utilization" of their art possessions , In: Collecting. Pens. Promote. Jewish patrons in German society , red. Andrea Baresel-Brand, Peter Müller, Magdeburg 2006, pp. 131–150, pp. 137f
  16. ↑ http://www.schlesischesammlungen.eu/Kolekcje/Neisser-Toni-1861-1913-Neisser-Albert-1855-1916-Breslau
personal data
SURNAME Neisser, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Neisser, Albert Ludwig Sigesmund (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dermatologist, bacteriologist and social hygienist
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1916
Place of death Wroclaw