Caroline Eichler

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Caroline Eichler

Margarethe Caroline Eichler (* 1808 or 1809; † September 6, 1843 in Berlin-Friedrichstadt ) was a German bandagist , instrument maker ( precision mechanic ) and designer. She designed the first usable modern hand prosthesis .

Life

Caroline Eichler was born in 1808 or 1809, presumably in Nordhausen or Berlin, as the third daughter of the painter Johann Gottlieb Eichler . Nothing is known about her schooling, but in her work she shows a knowledge of physics and technical mechanics . Around 1826 Eichler was working as a nanny for the family of F. Sperling, the " roast pecker " of Prince Wilhelm ( Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Or Wilhelm I ). She later said she worked as a nurse .

In 1832 Eichler designed a prosthetic leg with a knee joint , for which she was the first woman in Prussia to receive a patent on November 23, 1833 . She received further patents for the Russian Empire and, on January 13, 1835, for the Kingdom of Bavaria . Eichler advertised her leg prosthesis in a self- published text in which she proudly announced that her design had already been used with success. Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach , head of surgery at the Charité in Berlin , reports on the successful use of Eichler's foot prosthesis in one of his patients and expressly praises the design.

Eichler also received a Prussian patent for an artificial hand on November 24, 1836. This was the first usable self-powered upper limb prosthesis . Eichler then traded as a manufacturer of artificial feet and hands in Berlin. In contemporary literature, because she did not correspond to the common image of women at the time, she was also referred to as the “ blue stocking ”.

On October 30, 1837, Caroline Eichler married the seven years younger mechanic Carl Friedrich Eduard Krause from Bielefeld , from whom she later divorced. On September 6, 1843, she was murdered by Krause in her apartment with a pointed file . After the divorce, he repeatedly extorted money from her, the criminal report found, and that ultimately led to an argument.

Prosthetic leg

Drawing of Eichler's prosthetic leg

The leg prosthesis developed by Caroline Eichler had a mobile, independently working knee joint, which was by no means a matter of course at the time, but Eichler considered it to be inevitable. Previous designs either had no knee joint or, like the artificial legs described by the surgeon Ambroise Paré at the end of the 16th century , had to be operated using a pull cord .

The construction consisted of a shaft made of tinplate , brass and later nickel silver sheet for the stump of the leg, the articulated, hollow lower leg made of hollow linden , willow or poplar wood glued over with canvas and the two-part foot, which is also made of wood and was movably attached to the leg piece with a joint. The sheet metal of the femoral shaft could be cold-formed relatively easily and thus adapted to the stump . In addition, the prosthesis should be lighter in comparison to a solid wooden structure. The total weight was about 4 pounds of 15 solder (about 2.1 kg).

The knee joint managed without a locking device and was moved via gut strings and pressure-loaded coil springs , which, according to Eichler , should correspond to human tendons and muscles . The mechanism designed by Eichler allowed the knee to bend while walking, while the springs brought the leg back to its extended starting position when it was lifted. The amputee did not have to passively help out and “pull a thread”.

"By the way, these springs make the pull when walking smoothly and evenly, so that neither the stump nor the body is jolted."

- O. Martini: About artificial limbs

The designer compares the exercise required to walk with her prosthesis to learning to walk with a toddler or learning to dance . Instead of crutches , only a walking stick should be required, after a training period of one to two weeks, walking on paved and unpaved floors and even climbing stairs without a stick is possible.

Based on her experience as a nurse, Eichler attached great importance to practical usability. She therefore also described exactly how her artificial leg should be put on. The residual limb should first be tightly wrapped with bandages and then a padded leather funnel should be pulled over it before the prosthesis is put on and fastened over the shoulder with a strap. This should avoid any pressure on the thigh stump. Until then, it was common practice to support prosthetic legs directly on the stump, which made long-term use impossible.

reception

Expert commissions from the Prussian Ministry of Medicinal Beings and the Ministry of Trade and Industry subjected the prosthesis designed by Eichler to extensive testing before the patent was finally granted. Eichler received recommendations from numerous doctors, including General Staff Doctor Johann Wilhelm von Wiebel and Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach , head of surgery at the Berlin Charité .

In the opinion of contemporary authors, the prostheses represented a significant further development compared to all previously known constructions and, at least in German-speaking countries, served for a long time as a model and standard for later developments.

Hand prosthesis

Representation of arts and crafts

Eichler's artificial hand from 1836 was the first usable arbitrary , movable prosthesis of the upper extremity , i.e. without the support of the healthy hand . She used a principle invented by the Berlin dentist Peter Baliff around 1812 . Baliff had taken the " Iron Hand " of the historical Götz von Berlichingen as a model and designed an art hand, the construction of which, however, was not fully developed and not practical. The main point of criticism was that the fingers of the artificial hand were actively opened but passively closed by spring force. Baliff's prosthesis therefore lacked strength or could not be dosed adequately. In addition, his prosthesis made of sheet iron did not meet the anatomical or aesthetic requirements.

Although Eichler's hand prosthesis, like the Baliff's, was actuated by the remaining muscles in the upper arm stump using a pulling mechanism, its mechanism differed significantly from this one. The fingers were actively closed and stretched again by means of coil springs made of nickel silver wire, one in each finger joint. Gut strings with a diameter of around 1 mm were used for power transmission.

As with the "Götzhand", the fingers were movable in three joints, the thumb in two joints. They could also be moved individually using five separate slides on the wrist, but only passively. In contrast to the iron hands of the Renaissance, the hand prosthesis had an opposable thumb that enabled a forceps grip with a sixth slider .

Eichler's Kunsthand also adopted design features of the younger Götzhand: the wrist could be bent in the wrist and a radial bearing made it possible to passively rotate the hand in relation to the forearm shaft ( pronation or supination ) - a level of movement that Christian von Mechel found in 1815 when he examined the Götzhand had not yet recognized.

The hand prosthesis was formed from nickel silver sheet after two plaster casts (from the stump of the arm and from the healthy hand) and weighed only 8½ plumb bob (125 g). The phalanxes were covered with cork on the inside to improve the grip. The wearer of the prosthesis should be able to write, sew and embroider , but also be able to lift loads of up to 9 kg. The hand could easily be dismantled into its individual parts, which should simplify repairs and keep costs down. The purchase price was quite high at 75 to 100 thalers . The nickel silver used by Eichler remained the standard material for hand prostheses into the 20th century.

Fonts

  • Margarethe Caroline Eichler: Description and illustration of a reinvented artificial foot, to replace the upper and lower leg. Berlin 1834 ( archive.org ).

literature

  • Maria Curter: The forgotten "manufacturer". In: Neues Deutschland , September 8, 2008 ( online ).
  • Maria Curter: The inventive Berlin. Das Neue Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-360-02119-9 , pp. 26ff.
  • Carl Alexander Ferdinand Kluge, Hermann Eduard Fritze: arthroplasty or all the artificial hands and feet that have become known so far, to replace these lost limbs: with 26 tablets engraved in stone. Meyer, Lemgo 1842, OCLC 163049126 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Liebhard Löffler: The substitute for the upper extremity: the development from the first evidence to the present day. Enke, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-432-94591-4 .

Web links

Commons : Caroline Eichler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Doris Schwarzmann-Schafhauser: Orthopädie im Wandel: The Formation of Discipline and Profession in the Federation and the Empire (1815-1914). (= Sudhoffs Archiv. Issue 53.) Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-08500-9 , p. 39.
  2. ↑ a b Martin Friedrich Karpa: The history of the arm prosthesis with special consideration of the performance of Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875–1951). (= Dissertation, University of Bochum). Bochum 2004, p. 23; Digitized version (PDF).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Maria Curter: The forgotten "manufacturer".
  4. ↑ a b c Maria Curter: The inventive Berlin.
  5. ↑ Sperling, F. In: General housing gazette for Berlin, Charlottenburg and surroundings , 1825. “Bratenspicker b. Prince. Wilhelm, Neue Friedrichsstrasse 56 ”.
  6. ^ Official Journal of the Royal Prussian Government in Bromberg , January 3, 1834. P. 19, Textarchiv - Internet Archive .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Hermann Fritze: Arthroplastik.
  8. ^ Art and trade sheet of the Polytechnic Association for the Kingdom of Bavaria. 24th year, Polytechnic Association for the Kingdom of Bavaria, Munich 1838, column 713 f. ( Text archive - Internet Archive ).
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Caroline Eichler: Description and illustration of a reinvented artificial foot.
  10. ↑ a b c d e O. Martini: About artificial limbs. In: Hermann Eberhard Richter, Adolf Winter (Hrsg.): Schmidt's yearbooks of domestic and foreign entire medicine. Volume 115, Leipzig 1862, pp. 105-136 ( online ).
  11. ^ Supplement to the 51st issue of the Official Journal of the Royal. Government. December 17, 1836. In: Official Gazette of the Royal Prussian Government in Arnsberg. Heinrich Grote, Arnsberg 1836, p. 288 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  12. ^ Carl Ferdinand Graefe: Norms for the detachment of larger limbs according to principles of experience designed by Carl Ferdinand Graefe. Julius Hitzig, Berlin 1812, pp. 149f.
  13. ^ Otto Karpinski: Studies on artificial limbs. Berlin 1881, p. 48. Quoted from Martin Karpa: The history of the arm prosthesis with special consideration of the performance of Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875–1951). P. 23.
  14. ↑ Pierre Baliff: Description d'une main et d'une jambe artificielles par Pierre Ballif à Berlin. Berlin 1818.
  15. ↑ a b c d e f Liebhard Löffler: The substitute for the upper extremity.
  16. ↑ G. Schlesinger: The mechanical structure of the artificial limbs. In: Moritz Borchardt: Replacement members and working aids for war invalids and those injured in accidents. Springer, Berlin 1919, pp. 321-661.
  17. ^ Wiebke Ada de Boer: Clinical picture of acquired amputations in childhood - retrospective analysis of 124 patients from the clinic and polyclinic for technical orthopedics and rehabilitation in Münster from 1986–2003. (= Dissertation University of Münster). Münster 2008, p. 3; Digitized version (PDF).
  18. ^ Hermann Fritze: Arthroplasty. P. 33; see. Violin strings on damianstrings.com
  19. ^ Liebhard Löffler: Götz von Berlichingen and his prostheses (The two Jagsthausen hands). In: Orthopedic technology. 31/1, Dortmund 1980, ISSN  0340-5591 , p. 14.
  20. ↑ Limbs, artificial . In: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon . 6th edition. Volume 8, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1907, pp.  33–34 .
personal data
SURNAME Eichler, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eichler, Margarethe; Eichler, Karoline; Eichler, Margareth Caroline (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bandagist, instrument maker and designer
DATE OF BIRTH 1808 or 1809
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1843
Place of death Berlin-Friedrichstadt