Carl Wernicke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carl Wernicke

Carl Wernicke (born May 15, 1848 in Tarnowitz , Upper Silesia , † June 15, 1905 in Dörrberg ) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist . He worked as a professor in Breslau and Halle .

In 1874, Wernicke discovered the sensory language center (so-called Wernicke area ) in the brain , which, in contrast to Broca's motor area (after Paul Broca ), is responsible for understanding language.

Life

Carl Wernicke was born on May 15, 1848 in Tarnowitz in Upper Silesia ; his father, who died early, was an auditor for the Mining Authority. Wernicke attended the Royal High School in Opole and the Maria Magdalenen High School in Breslau until he graduated from high school in 1866. He studied medicine at the University of Breslau and received his doctorate in 1870. In 1870/71 he took part in the Franco-German War as a doctor. As an assistant doctor he worked at the Allerheiligenhospital under the psychiatrist Heinrich Neumann. From there he was sent on a six-month study visit to Theodor Meynert, who was director of the psychiatric clinic at the university clinic in Vienna and who researched the anatomical foundations of "soul activity", an approach that Wernicke himself then pursued.

From 1875 to 1878 he was an assistant at the psychiatric and mental hospital of the Charité in Berlin under Carl Westphal, where he completed his habilitation. Wernicke, who was considered “headstrong and not very willing to compromise”, had to leave the clinic in a conflict with the management and initially worked as a resident neurologist in Berlin. During this time his great textbook on brain diseases was written .

In 1885 he was appointed associate professor for psychiatry and nervous diseases in Breslau and in 1890 he was appointed full professor. In 1904 he followed a call to Halle . As director of the psychiatric and mental hospital in Halle, he worked for barely nine months. He had an accident on June 13, 1905 on a bike ride through the Thuringian Forest ; He suffered several broken ribs and a broken sternum , which resulted in a pneumothorax . He died of these serious injuries. His body was cremated in Gotha .

In addition to Otfrid Foerster , his most important students include Karl Bonhoeffer (in Breslau), Hugo Liepmann and Karl Kleist .

At that time, his anatomical localization of neurological-psychological problems stood in contrast to the phenomenological approach, which Emil Kraepelin in particular represented, which is why his teaching was derided by the philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers as "brain mythology".

plant

Wernicke's discovery was first published in 1874

As early as 1874, the 26-year-old Wernicke had published a paper in which he reported his discovery of the sensory language center and its disorder, (cortical) sensory aphasia , which was later named after Wernicke. This work, “a psychological study on an anatomical basis”, turns out to be one of the great events in the history of medicine, both thanks to the observations it contains and to the strength of the effects it had. It was based on Theodor Meynert's views on the structure, activity and management systems of the brain, which are divided into projection systems and association systems. In this way, Wernicke explained the motor aphasia ( Broca , lesion of the 3rd forehead curl ), the sensory aphasia (he demonstrated a lesion of the 1st temporal curl) and assumed a conduction aphasia through the destruction of the connecting system of associations.

From this point of view, Wernicke's scientific activity forks in three directions:

  • One branch was the anatomy of the central nervous system , especially the brain, in which he always saw the foundation of all clinical work. The result of this research was the first volume of his "Textbook of Brain Diseases" (1881), in which he tried to localize the focus of neurological diseases.
  • Work in the field of brain pathology , in the 2nd and 3rd volume of the textbook on brain diseases, and mental diseases , in his "Grundriss der Psychiatrie" (1894-1900).
  • A large number of smaller publications about: the clinical picture of polioencephalitis haemorrhagica , the hemiopic pupillary reaction , the predilection type of cerebral palsy, together with Ludwig Mann , ("Wernicke-Mann predilection type").

Karl Bonhoeffer reports from his time as assistant to Wernicke in 1893 (when he was working on his textbook on psychiatry ): "One [...] lived in the hope of finding the anatomical basis of psychoses by means of the histopathology of the cortex".

Most important work

  • The aphasic symptom complex. A psychological study on an anatomical basis . Breslau: M. Cohn & Weigert 1874 ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Brain Disease Textbook. Vol. I-III. Berlin: Theodor Fischer 1881–1883
  • Atlas of the brain. With E. Hahn, H.Sachs, P. Schröder, O Förster. Berlin: Karger 1897–1903
  • Outline of psychiatry in clinical lectures. Leipzig: G. Thieme 1900
  • Medical presentations from the psychiatric clinic in Wroclaw , issue 1–3. Breslau: Schlettersche Buchhandlung 1899–1900

literature

  • G. Blanken, Jürgen Dittmann , H. Sinn: Old solutions for new problems. A contribution to the topicality of the aphasia theory by Carl Wernicke. Neurolinguistics 7 , 1993, 91-104
  • Hans Walter Gruhle : Wernicke's psychopathological and clinical teachings . Nervenarzt 26 , 1955, 505-507
  • K. Kleist : Patho-architectural justification of sensory aphasia . In: E. Rehwald: The brain trauma . Stuttgart: Thieme, 1956
  • E. Kleist: Carl Wernicke . In: Kurt Kolle : Große Nervenärzte , Volume 2, Stuttgart: Thieme, 1970
  • Mario Horst Lanczik: The Breslau psychiatrist Carl Wernicke. Work analysis and impact history as a contribution to the medical history of Silesia. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1988 (= Silesian Research. Volume 2).
  • Mario Lanczik: Wernicke, 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. 1474.
  • P. Schröder : The teachings of Wernicke and their significance for today's psychiatry . Journal for the whole of neurology and psychiatry 165 , 1939, 38–47, doi: 10.1007 / BF02871468

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sabine Schuchart: Carl Wernicke localized mental disorders in the brain . Deutsches Ärzteblatt 2017, Volume 114, Issue 19 of May 12, 2017, page 61
  2. ↑ Werner Gottwald: Otfrid Foerster (1873-1941) at the beginning of modern neurosurgery. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 431-448.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , pp. 78 and 150.
personal data
SURNAME Wernicke, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist and psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarnowitz , Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1905
Place of death Dörrberg