Carl Koller
Carl Koller or Karl Koller (born December 3, 1857 in Schüttenhofen / Böhmen , Austrian Empire , † March 22, 1944 in New York ) was an Austrian ophthalmologist and the founder of modern local anesthesia .
Life
After studying medicine at the University of Vienna from 1876 to 1882, Koller, son of a Jewish family, worked there with Ferdinand von Arlt and Salomon Stricker at the Vienna General Hospital . One day his colleague Fritz Zinner publicly denigrated him as a “ Jew ”, whereupon Koller punched him in the face. This led to a saber duel in January 1885, although it was already forbidden at the time, in which Koller was unharmed, but Zinner received two deep wounds. Koller's hopes for a good position in the eye department and for an academic career in Vienna were therefore gone, despite good professional performance. He therefore left Vienna and stayed in Utrecht from 1885 to 1886. In 1888 he first stayed in London, then in May 1888 he emigrated to New York City .
Local anesthesia in ophthalmology
At the suggestion of Sigmund Freud , like William Stewart Halsted , he made experiments with cocaine on animals and himself. At that time, eye surgery was a difficult undertaking due to the reflex movements of the eyes when touched. Koller discovered that a few drops of a cocaine solution eliminated this problem by numbing the cornea . Koller has been the founder of modern local anesthesia in ophthalmology since 1884 (surface anesthesia to relieve pain in eye diseases was already carried out with opium in the Middle Ages , which, however, had been forgotten as a standard procedure). Cocaine is still used today as a local anesthetic in ophthalmology. However, it has been increasingly replaced by synthetic local anesthetics.
Koller was nominated several times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine .
literature
- Huldrych M. Koelbing: Koller, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 465 ( digitized version ).
- Lauber: Koller, Karl. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1969, p. 88.
- Koller, Karl , in: Élisabeth Roudinesco ; Michel Plon: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: Names, Countries, Works, Terms . Translation. Vienna: Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-211-83748-5 , p. 560.
- Marita Amm: Koller, Carl. 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. 772 f.
Web links
- Entry on Carl Koller in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- Biography on cocaine.org
- image
- Wilhelm Fleischhacker: The Curse and Blessing of Cocaine (PDF file; 4.39 MB). In: Österreichische Apotherkerzeitung. 26/2006, pp. 1286-1288.
Individual evidence
- ↑ C. Koller: Preliminary information on local anesthesia on the eye. In: supplement to the clinical weekly papers for ophthalmology. Volume 22, 1884, pp. 60-63.
- ↑ Gundolf Keil : "blutken - bloedekijn". Notes on the etiology of the hyposphagma genesis in the 'Pommersfeld Silesian Eye Booklet' (1st third of the 15th century). With an overview of the ophthalmological texts of the German Middle Ages. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 8/9, 2012/2013, pp. 7–175, here: p. 54.
- ↑ Nominations on nobelprize.org
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Koller, Carl |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Koller, Karl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian-American ophthalmologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 3, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Schüttenhofen , Bohemia |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 22, 1944 |
| Place of death | New York City |