Arthur Hill Hassall

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Arthur Hill Hassall, 1868
An illustration of microbes from his book A microscopic examination of the water supplied to the inhabitants of London and the suburban districts (1850)
Representation of microscopic components from adulterated black tea - Food: its adulterations, and the methods for their detection (1876)

Arthur Hill Hassall [ ˌɑːθə hɪlˈhæsɒl ] (born December 13, 1817 in Teddington , † April 9, 1894 in Sanremo ) was an English doctor, anatomist, physiologist, microbiologist, botanist and social medicine specialist. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Hass. "

Live and act

Hassall was born in Middlesex, the youngest of five children, to a surgeon's home. His father was Thomas Hassall (1771-1844) and his mother was born Ann Sherrock (approx. 1778-1817). He spent his school days in Richmond . Eventually he began his medical training under the guidance of Sir James Murray (1788–1871). He completed his medical degree at Trinity College in Dublin . A student of Sir James Murray, he became a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1845 and received his doctorate from the University of London in 1851. While working at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he himself suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis and often had to pause his practice. During this time he lived in London at 67 Park St, Westminster with his wife Fanny Hassall (1825-1882) a née Hackney. After the death of his first wife, he married again in 1883 in Islington, née Alice Margaret MacGill (* 1847) from Clapham.

He practiced in London from 1845 to 1869. In the mid-1860s his phthisis increased and so he decided to move his center of life to the Isle of Wight in order to hope for more favorable healing conditions for his pulmonary tuberculosis. On the Ile of Wight, Hassall founded the National Cottage Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest (later called the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest ) in Ventnor in 1865 , in which each of the 130 patients had their own room and one Sanatorium .

From 1878 he lived temporarily in San Remo in north-western Italy and in Lucerne , where he spent the summers. During his stays in San Remo he reflected on the influence of climatic conditions on the healing process of pulmonary tuberculosis and published his considerations and results in 1879 under the title San Remo and the Western Riviera Climatically and Medically Considered . His autobiography appeared in 1893 shortly before his death with the title The narrative of a busy life .

His numerous works covered the areas of anatomy and physiology, chemistry and pathological anatomy, botany and zoology. In particular, he was interested in questions of hygiene and public health care. His work on food adulteration resulted in the results of his research published in The Lancet by the reformer Thomas Wakley in 1860 leading to the Food Adulteration Act , a regulation against these practices. He maintained further scientific contacts with Thomas Wakley. Wakley 1835 was a member of since the year lower house ( House of Commons ) to obtain and supported in its efforts Hassall, a parliamentary regulation against the adulteration of food.

In 1846 he histologically described the corpuscula thymica or engl. Hassall's corpuscles (German Hassall- Körperchen or Hassall-Henle-Körperchen , also named after Jakob Henle ) in the thymus . Small thickenings of the Descemet membrane ( lamina limitans posterior of the cornea) also bear his name.

His botanical interest was u. a. the zygomatic algae (Zygnemataceae), some of which he identified, such as Zygnema interruptum Hassall . At times he did research at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew .

Hassall and the London sewer systems, the fight against cholera

Until the middle of the 19th century, the idea of ​​the miasm as the cause of many epidemics was also widespread in scientific circles. As one of the first in his time, John Snow worked with a microbiologist on questions of hygiene , especially in the fight against cholera . John Snow and the microscopist Hassall, on the other hand, put forward the hypothesis that cholera is caused by living microorganisms in service water. Filippo Pacini, in 1854, was not alone in speculating that there was a microorganism that could cause cholera. In the same year Hassall also reported to the “Medical Council of the General Board of Health” in London that Pacini's hypothesis was a serious consideration, since myriads of vibriones in every drop of every sample of rice-water discharges were just that teem.

In 1855, John Snow showed in his "East Study" that the serious cholera epidemic in the London borough of Soho was caused by contaminated water from a pump system on Broad Street. At the request of John Snow, Hassall examined the water in the pump system , the London sewer system and the Thames and the stool samples from the patients and found cholera pathogens in all cases .

Works (selection)

  • The Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body in Health and Disease. S. Highley, London 1846
  • A microscopical examination of the water supplied to the inhabitants of London and the suburban districts. S. Highley, London 1850
  • San Remo and the Western Riviera Climatically and Medically Considered. Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1883
  • A compendium of food microscopy with sections on drugs, water, and tobacco. Baillière, Tindall and Cox, London 1909
  • A history of the British freshwater Algae, including descriptions of the. Desmidiaceae and Diatomaceae. pp. vi, 462. Atlas, 103 ph. col 8. London, 1845.
  • Adulterations detected; or, Plain instructions for the discovery of frauds in food and medicine. Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1876
  • The urine in health and disease: being an exposure of the composition of the urine, and of the pathology and treatment of urinary and renal disorders. John Churchill and Sons, London 1863
  • Food: its adulterations, and the methods for their detection. Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, London 1876
  • The inhalation treatment of diseases of the organs of respiration including consumption. Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1885
  • The Narrative Of A Busy Life: An Autobiography. Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1893

literature

  • Edwy Godwin Clayton: Arthur Hill Hassall, Physician Sanitary. London 1908, Reprint Forgotten Books, 2013.
  • EA Gray: By Candlelight. The Life of Dr Arthur Hill Hassall 1817-94. Robert Hale, London 1983
  • Walter Gratzer: Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition. Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-157862-5
  • James M. Williamson: Ventnor And The Undercliff In Chronic Pulmonary Diseases. General Books 2009, ISBN 1-4589-9237-3

Web links

Commons : Arthur Hill Hassall  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to other sources on September 13th.
  2. ↑ According to other information, the date of death was April 10, 1894.
  3. ^ A b Ernest A Gray: By Candlelight: The Life of Dr Arthur Hill Hassall (1817-1894) , London: Robert Hale, 1983, Review, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine , Volume 76, November 1983, PMC 1439648 (freer Full text)
  4. ↑ International Plant Names Index, 2005 online
  5. ↑ James Price: Hassall, Arthur Hill (1817-1894), physician and microscopist. in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online
  6. ↑ Short biography of Arthur Hill Hassall, in English, online
  7. ^ Biography Sir James Murray, in English, online
  8. ^ Wikisource biography of Sir James Murray
  9. ^ Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach : Hassal, Arthur Hill. 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. 538.
  10. ^ The Royal National Hospital, Ventnor
  11. ↑ James H. Price: Hassall, Arthur Hill (1817-1894). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004
  12. ↑ Johannes Friedrich Diehl: Chemistry in food: residues, impurities, ingredients and additives. John Wiley & Sons, 2008, ISBN 3-527-62461-9 , pp. 4-5.
  13. ^ Hassall, AH, 1846. Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body in Health and Disease, Highly, London.
  14. ↑ Louis Kater: A Note on Hassall's Corpuscles. Contemporary Topics in Immunobiology Volume 2, 1973, pp. 101-109.
  15. ^ The fight against food adulteration , Noel G Coley, RSC: Education in chemistry. Issues, Mar 2005
  16. ↑ The causative agent of cholera was first described by Filippo Pacini in 1854 as a curved, comma-shaped and highly mobile bacterium; Filippo Pacini: Osservazioni microscopiche e deduzioni patalogiche sul cholera asiatico. Gazzetta medica italiana federativa toscana, Florence, vol. 4, déc. 1854; réimprimé dans Lo Sperimentale, Florence, 1924, 78: 277-282.
  17. ↑ David Vachon: Doctor John Snow Blames Water Pollution for Cholera Epidemic. Father of Modern Epidemiology, Part Two, online. From Old News 16 (8), 8-10, May & June, 2005
  18. ^ Norman Howard-Jones: The scientific background of the International Sanitary Conferences. World Health Organization, Geneva 1975. In The second conference: Paris, 1859, p. 17, online
  19. ^ AH Hassall, in: Great Britain, General Board of Health, Report of the Committee for Scientific Inquiries in relation to the Cholera Epidemic of 1854. London 1855
  20. ^ Stephanie J. Snow: Death by Water. John Snow and the cholera in the 19th century. Liverpool Medical History Society. 4 March 1999
  21. ↑ Ronald D. Barley : The Dark Secret of the Pump on Broad Street. For the 200th birthday of John Snow . Chirurgische Allgemeine , Volume 15, Issue 2 (2014), pp. 123–126.
  22. ↑ Amanda J. Thomas: The Lambeth Cholera Outbreak of 1848-1849: The Setting, Causes, Course and Aftermath of an Epidemic in London. McFarland, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-5714-4 , p. 37 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hassall, Arthur Hill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor, botanist, social medic
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Teddington
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1894
Place of death Sanremo