Bernhard Fischer (doctor)

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Bernhard Fischer

Johann Friedrich Bernhard Fischer (born February 19, 1852 in Coburg , † August 2, 1915 in Dadizele ) was a German physician and marine microbiologist .

Life

Youth and education

House in Coburg,
Steinweg 43

Bernhard Fischer was born in Coburg in 1852 as the first son and second child of master baker Johann Gottfried Fischer and his wife Sophie Clementine Fischer, born in Greiner. The family lived at Steinweg 43 and owned a bakery there, which the mother continued to run with the help of her children even after the father's death in 1864. From 1862 to 1871 Bernhard attended the Casimirianum grammar school in Coburg . Due to his good grades, he was traditionally allowed to give a speech at the annual “Foundation Festival”. Supported by a scholarship from a family-based foundation, Fischer began studying medicine at the Medical-Surgical Friedrich Wilhelm Institute in Berlin at the end of April 1871 , with the obligation to serve as a military doctor after completing his studies. From 1871 he was a member of the Pépinière-Corps Franconia Berlin . In 1875 he received his doctorate on the subject of Purpura .

Navy time

The Elisabeth
German cholera expedition to Egypt

In the following years Fischer served as a doctor in the Imperial Navy . On October 1, 1876, he was posted as an assistant doctor on the midshipman's training ship Elisabeth for a two-year trip around the world. After a brief activity in the military hospital of the North Sea naval station in Wilhelmshaven, he worked as a ship's doctor in the Chinese coastal area on the gunboat Cyclop from May 1879 to April 1881 .

In order to deepen his training, the marine medical officer Fischer received a command from the Imperial Health Department in February 1882 , whose employee Robert Koch introduced him to the working methods of bacteriology and hygiene . On the occasion of a cholera epidemic in Egypt , Fischer accompanied Robert Koch on an expedition to Egypt and India from August 1883 to May 1884, together with the medical officer Georg Gaffky and the chemist Treskow, who was employed as a taxidermist, as a member of the German Cholera Commission . In Calcutta , in early 1884, Koch was able to find, isolate and breed the bacterium Vibrio cholerae , which is responsible for cholera . After returning to Germany, Fischer was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle 3rd class on a black and white ribbon.

From October 1884 to May 1885 Fischer was as a medical officer on board the corvette SMS Olga who for riot in Cameroon was used. The next and last command in the Seebataillon of the Imperial Navy was a command of a training ship, the cruiser frigate SMS Moltke , which lasted until April 1, 1886. This was followed by a transfer to the Baltic Sea naval station in Kiel as a naval senior staff doctor .

University time

In addition to his medical work on the Moltke, Fischer was allowed to carry out marine microbiological research in which he examined bacteria in sea water and in sea air under the microscope and which became part of his habilitation thesis under the title About a light-developing fissure fungus found in sea water . The habilitation took place at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel on March 14, 1887. In the summer semester of 1887, Fischer held his first lecture “Bacteriology and Hygiene with Demonstrations and Exercises” as an unpaid private lecturer and set up laboratory rooms at his own expense. On February 4, 1889 he was appointed as an extra full professor with no claim to salary and head of the hygienic department at the Institute for State Medicine. He also taught at the Naval Academy and School (Kiel) . In the summer of 1889 he resigned from the naval service without a pension entitlement because he had not been approved for a vacation for the plankton expedition of the Humboldt Foundation . From July to November 1889 he took part in the expedition led by Victor Hensen as a doctor, hygienist and marine microbiological researcher . In particular, Fischer examined the microorganisms that produce sea glow. He made photograms of luminous bacteria available for the chapter on bacteriology in the report on the world exhibition of 1893 ; Martinus Willem Beijerinck named the luminous bacterium Vibrio fischeri after him in 1889 (as Photobacterium fischeri ).

From 1891 the Ministry of Culture approved a salary for Fischer, who became director of the Hygiene Institute of the Medical Faculty of Kiel University. For his hometown of Coburg, in 1899, he prepared the “expert opinion on the removal of faeces and sewage from the ducal residence city of Coburg” free of charge. The focus at the institute was on water hygiene and bacteriological issues. He supervised 23 scientists during their doctorates or habilitation. In 1911/12, Fischer was rector of the CAU. In his inaugural address on March 6, 1911, he dealt with the "fight against infectious diseases in the light of statistics".

After the outbreak of the First World War , the chief medical officer Fischer was reactivated and was called up as an advisory hygienist with the 27th Royal Saxon Regiment in Flanders on July 1, 1915. Fischer died of a heart attack on August 2, when he was 63 years old on an inspection trail. The cremation with an official memorial service took place on August 7, 1915 in the crematorium of the Ohlsdorf cemetery .

family

Bernhard Fischer married Mathilde Anna Luise Pauline Forkel (1862–1933), daughter of the weaving mill owner Adolf Julius Forkel (1825–1899), on September 18, 1890 in Coburg, after a ten-year engagement period. The couple, who lived in Kiel, had four daughters and one son.

Publications

literature

  • Gabriele Kredel: Bernhard Fischer (1852–1915), marine doctor, hygienist and marine microbiologist . In: Yearbook of the Coburg State Foundation 1992. ISSN  0084-8808

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 60 , 63
  2. ↑ Martin Exner: The discovery of the cholera etiology by Robert Koch 1883/84 (PDF; 6.7 MB)
  3. ^ Coburger Zeitung, September 8, 1888
  4. ↑ JP Euzéby: List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature - Vibrio fischeri ( Memento of March 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Rector's speeches (HKM)
personal data
SURNAME Fischer, Bernhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fischer, Johann Friedrich Bernhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician and marine microbiologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Coburg
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1915
Place of death Dadizele