Anton Heidenschreider

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Anton Heidenschreider (born January 14, 1826 in Herrieden (Middle Franconia); † January 6, 1870 there ) was a German doctor and meteorologist .

childhood and education

Anton Heidenschreider was born as the son of Alois Heidenschreider and his wife Walburga on January 14, 1826 in Herrieden (former Rezatkreis , now the district of Middle Franconia ). His father had been a district court doctor in the district since 1822 and also worked in his own local practice.

Anton Heidenschreider attended the local elementary school and then received private lessons until he moved to the upper class of the Latin school in Ansbach . After graduating from Latin school, he studied medicine in Würzburg and Erlangen .

PhD thesis

Heidenschreiber received his doctorate in 1854 with the work attempt at a medical topography of the Herrieden district court district . The work was based on the attempt of a topography of the city of Würzburg by the university lecturer Philipp Joseph Horsch (1772-1820), who was a major active in his time in Würzburg, city physicist, doctor of the citizen hospital and the prisons in Würzburg, who was probably one of his academic teachers.

Heidenschreider's doctoral thesis is divided into four sections. After describing the location of the city and its surroundings in the Altmühltal , its soils and above all the local climate, a list of all the animals, plants and minerals to be found in the area follows on 50 pages. When writing it, he benefited from the observations he had made over many years as a scientifically guided boy in his home country. In the third part, the local geographic conditions, the soil conditions and the economic structure of the district court are presented. Of particular medical history significance is the fourth part of the thesis about the "Medizinalwesen" with an evaluation of population statistics , a "medical characteristics of the population" as well as those presented in the previous 30 years epidemics .

Activity as a doctor

Anton Heidenschreider completed his studies in 1854 and received the "Staatsconcess". He initially worked for a few years as an assistant in his father's private practice in the Herrenhof. When his father died on November 9, 1862, Anton Heidenschreider took over his position as the district court doctor and also the practice in his parents' house, where he continued to live with his mother.

Activity as a meteorologist

As the only academically educated professional group with extensive distribution in the dominion, city and district doctors often carried out systematic meteorological observations in Heidenschreider's time on the instructions of their sovereigns . They used the then emerging instruments to measure temperature , air pressure , humidity, etc. and created - especially for agriculture - calendars with weather forecasts, partly with a mixture of astrology, many years of experience and information on old farming rules .

Heidenschreider's predecessor, Uncle Meier, had already started observing the weather in Herrieden in 1811 in accordance with official requirements and systematically recorded them. Heidenschreider's father continued this seamlessly. Anton Heidenschreider jun. took over this task as a thirteen-year-old interested in science in 1839.

As a district court physician, he then reported his results regularly to renowned scientists at the universities in Munich and Münster and became a member of the then internationally leading “Association scientifique de France”. He was included in a "state-of-the-art network" of 32 meteorologists across Europe and exchanged e.g. For example, with Paris , Palermo , Rome and Vienna the current weather data (such as temperature, air pressure, wind direction / strength, humidity, amount of rain, etc.) via the “telegraph post”. In addition, he recorded the water levels of the Altmühl and the groundwater. He conducted his investigations solely on the basis of the experiences of his predecessors and his personal observations. His work in collecting meteorological data received international recognition.

Medical research

Heidenschreider was a supporter of a so-called "anthropometeorological" approach, in which an attempt was made to link the occurrence of diseases with the prevailing weather. He therefore tried to find connections between the current weather and the diseases that were occurring at the same time.

Heidenscheider observed that when the groundwater level was low, the dysentery and other diarrheal diseases spread ("several typhus sufferers , probably as a result of the sinking groundwater", "many cases of cholera when the groundwater level is low ") and, conversely, a reduction in the sickness rate "than the high level of the underground water [be] ”(“ Typhoid cases on the decline, probably because of the rising groundwater ”). What he lacked was the conclusion that when the water level in the wells was low, the population began to draw water from other, superficial sources that were contaminated by human and animal faeces and the corresponding pathogens, e.g. B. from the Altmühl to scoop and it came to the spread of the diseases.

The most common and most important, because potentially fatal, diseases of the time were respiratory diseases recognized as infectious diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis , gastrointestinal infections such as dysentery and cholera, typhus , scarlet fever , measles and flu . The causes of these diseases, namely the penetration and multiplication of bacteria and viruses in the body, were not recognized until the 1880s (e.g. by Robert Koch ), i.e. only 15 to 20 years after the death of Anton Heidenschreider.

Publications

For almost five years, Heidenschreider provided the Medical Intelligence Gazette in Munich with a monthly report from Herrieden about his weather observations in connection with the development of the current sick leave. These reports appeared in the "Correspondences" section until his death in 1870.

Heidenscheider addressed himself to a broad audience in lectures with easily understandable presentations of his research and aroused general interest. So appeared z. B. 1868 in the "Abhandlungen der Naturhistorische Gesellschaft zu Nürnberg" a contribution with the title: "Meteorological observations in Herrieden, in connection with the prevailing diseases".

Death and obituary

Heidenschreider died on January 6th, 1870. The Würzburg District Medical Councilor F. Escherich states that the immediate cause of death was a " heartbeat as a result of acute liver suppuration and a fatty heart , the latter of which he was predisposed to because of excessive fat formation".

In a multi-page obituary in the Medical Intelligence Gazette, Escherich summarizes Anton Heidenschreider's many years of practical and scientific work. He particularly emphasizes the comprehensive weather observations and states: “Meteorology is becoming more and more important for science, for agriculture and health care. It increases in value through the duration and accuracy of its observations. "

Heidenscheider's observations may not have made significant progress in medical science, but his work was certainly an important building block in the development of meteorology.

Fonts

  • Attempt of a medical topography of the district court district Herrieden. Inaugural treatise of the medical faculty in Erlangen , 1854
  • The real Herrieder calendar for the year 1870. With a temperature calendar for Central Europe and a weather prophecy art. Only legitimate original edition . Second year, Verlag der Ellinger'schen Buchhandlung Würzburg
  • Meteorological observations in Herrieden, in connection with the prevailing diseases in the budget years 1866–67 , resp. Calendar year 1867 from Heidenschreider, general practitioner. In: Treatises of the Natural History Society in Nuremberg . IV. Volume. Wilhelm Schmid Nuremberg 1868. Chronicle of the city of Herrieden M002.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Philipp Josef Horsch: An attempt at a topography of the city of Würzburg, in relation to the general state of health and the institutions aimed at it. Arnstadt / Rudolstadt 1805.
  2. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek : Horsch, Philipp Joseph. 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. 617 f.
  3. ↑ He was the father of the Ansbach-born discoverer of the most important intestinal bacteria for humans, Escherichia coli, of whose existence Heidenschreider did not yet know anything.
personal data
SURNAME Heidenschreider, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Herrieden (Middle Franconia)
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1870
Place of death Herrieden (Middle Franconia)