Alexis Carrel

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Alexis Carrel

Alexis Carrel (born June 28, 1873 in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon , † November 5, 1944 in Paris ) was a French surgeon , anatomist and physiologist . In 1912 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine .

Alexis Carrel's primary focus was on experimental surgery and the transplantation of tissues and entire organs . As early as 1902 he published a method for connecting blood vessels and in 1910 he showed how blood vessels could be stored for long periods of time. In 1908 he demonstrated the first results of organ transplants and in 1935 he and the aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh built a device that could provide sterile ventilation for removed organs. Together with the French surgeon Theodore Tuffier (1857–1929), he successfully carried out a series of heart valve operations and was able to cultivate heart muscle cells .

Life

Alexis Carrel was born near Lyon to the merchant Alexis Carrel and his wife Anne Ricard . His father died when he was very young. In 1890 Carrel acquired his license ès sciences , a year earlier the license de lettres at the University of Lyon . In 1900 he received his doctorate in medicine from the same university. He then began his medical career at the Lyon Hospital, and he also taught anatomy and surgery as a prosector at the University. In 1902 he specialized in experimental surgery at the Lyon Hospital. In 1902, as a skeptical surgeon, he took part in a pilgrimage for the sick to Lourdes , during which, according to Carrels' testimony, an inexplicable cure for a terminally ill tuberculosis sufferer took place after prayers and a visit to the spas in Massabielle .

In 1904, Carrel moved to the Department of Physiology at the University of Chicago under Professor George Neil Stewart (1860-1930). From 1906 to 1912 he continued his work at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University ). In 1912 he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in recognition of his work on vascular sutures and on vascular and organ transplants .

In 1909 Carrel was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1914 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1914 to 1919 he served as a major in the French Medical Army Corps during World War II . During this time he mainly improved the well-known Carrel and Dakin wound treatment . Carrel returned to the United States as a professor. In 1927 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . In 1932 Carrel was elected a member of the Leopoldina . In February 1937 Carrel appeared publicly as a committed apologetic Catholic , while he had already wrestled with the question of God as an agnostic during his studies and since 1902 again .

Carrel returned to France in 1939, shortly before the Seat War , and in 1941 took a post in the health ministry of the Vichy regime in Paris . In 1940 he became director of the Fondation Française pour l'Etude des Problèmes Humains ("French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems"), which was dissolved after the liberation of Paris .

Publications

The Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt in Stuttgart published his main non-medical work, Der Mensch, das Unknown Wesen, in German by 1957 . Carrel's enthusiastic praise for the energetic measures taken by the National Socialists against the increase in the inferior, mentally ill and criminal was reprinted without comment.

In his work he speaks out against the emancipation of women and justifies this with biological differences: “In its full extent, the importance of the reproductive function in women has not yet been recognized. This function is inevitably part of the full development of women, and it is therefore pointless to take women against motherhood. One should not use the same mental and physical education methods or raise the same demands with young girls as with boys. "

Carrel was partly based on the racial theory and eugenetics of the early 20th century. The book states that the “white races” achieved “supremacy in the world” through a superior nervous system.

Afterlife

Until 1994, the medical faculty of the University of Lyon carried his name ( Faculté Alexis Carrel ), then the name was deleted (for the reasons see the Zeit article). On January 12, 2006 in Hanover, after a previous public debate, Alexis-Carrel-Strasse was renamed Rudolf-Pichlmayr-Strasse due to the allegedly heavily burdened past of the namesake . In 1979 a moon crater was named Carrel in his honor . Carrel Island in Antarctica has been named after him since 1951 .

Publications (selection)

  • Lifestyle considerations . Kindler, Munich 1968 (Kindler paperbacks; 2046/2047: Mind and Psyche)
  • Man, the unknown being . DVA, Stuttgart, most recently 81–85. Th. 1955; License for List, Munich 1955 - there 31. – 45. Th. 1957
  • The miracle of Lourdes: with diary sheets and reflections from the estate . 2nd edition, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1952

literature

  • Helmut Leonhardt: Alexis Carrell. The founder of the surgical technique for vascular sutures and organ transplants . In: Hans Schwerte , Wilhelm Spengler (ed.): Researchers and scientists in Europe today. Explorers of life: Mediziner… Series: Gestalter der Zeit Vol. 4. Stalling, Oldenburg 1955, pp. 45–52 (due to the publisher's SS origin, a precise and critical examination of the article is highly advisable)
  • Rudolf Walther: The strange teachings of Doctor Carrel . In: Die Zeit , No. 32/2003, p. 70; Carrel as a eugenicist and philosopher, proponent of the death penalty for felons, and eugenic criminology . Also as an essential source of inspiration for Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood .
  • Joseph-Simon Görlach: Western Representations of Fascist Influences on Islamist Thought . In: Jörg Feuchter, Friedhelm Hoffmann, Bee Yun (eds.): Cultural Transfers in Dispute. Representations in Asia, Europe, and the Arab World . Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2011, pp. 149–165 [Own and foreign worlds; vol. 23].
  • Werner E. Gerabek : Carrel, Alexis. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 231 f.

Web links

Commons : Alexis Carrel  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Die Zeit article, see literature
  2. ^ A b Stanley J. Jaki OSB : Miracles and the Nobel Laureate .
  3. ↑ Member History: Alexis Carrel. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 31, 2018 .
  4. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter C. Académie des sciences, accessed on October 25, 2019 (French).
  5. ^ Andrés Horacio Reggiani: God's eugenicist: Alexis Carrel and the sociobiology of decline . Berghahn Books, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-84545-172-1 , pp. 160 f.
  6. ^ AC: The human being, the unknown being DVA, Stuttgart, last 81. – 85. Th. 1955; License for List, Munich 1950, p. 133
  7. ↑ Man, the unknown being . ibid .; List edition 1950, p. 154
personal data
SURNAME Carrel, Alexis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French surgeon, winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Medicine
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon , France
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1944
Place of death Paris