Eduard Arning

Eduard Arning, photograph by Rudolf Dührkoop , 1903

Eduard (Edward) Christian Arning (born  June 9, 1855 in Manchester ; †  August 20, 1936 in Munich ) was a German-English dermatologist and leprosy researcher who carried out human experiments.

Life

Eduard Arning came from an old Hamburg patrician family. His grandfather was the Senator Johann Arning . At first he was raised bilingual (German-English) by private tutors , then went through the Johanneum in Hamburg until he graduated from high school. After studying medicine in Heidelberg and Strasbourg he met in Berlin the famous dermatologist Oskar Lassar - a native of Hamburg - know who it to the Department of Dermatology Wroclaw mediated. Like Vienna, Breslau was a stronghold of German dermatology . Arning became a student of Oskar Simon (1845–1882) and Albert Neisser (1855–1916), who were among the most recognized dermatologists of the time.

Leprosy Research in Hawaii

After leaving the clinic in Breslau, he went to Hawaii for three years from 1883 to 1886 as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of the Prussian Academy of Sciences to study leprosy . Here Arning experimented with people by infecting them with leprosy bacteria and observing the development of the disease. He was given a budget of 10,000 marks for his research.

In his research proposal, Arning named the “favorable experimental conditions”. This included the fact that leprosy had only recently been introduced "through the colonial appropriation of Hawaii" ( Anna Bergmann ). Arning named the widespread spread of the disease as the first criterion: “1. Size of the existing medical material . ”The“ material ”is also divided into a few points:“ in an observation station ”and in a segregation colony on the island of Molokai . The rapid course of the disease was of particular importance for his research:

“While in European leprosy countries 15–20 years are valid for the course of leprosy, (...) on the SW islands, leprosy almost without exception leads to death in 3–5 years. There is therefore a well-founded hope of gaining more detailed information on the more compact clinical course as well as on the previously so little known visceral forms of leprosy through copious sections . "

- Eduard Arning : quoted from Bergmann

On site, however, the experimental conditions were more difficult because the "isolation" in the " Polynesian culture was politically unenforceable" (Bergmann). Initially, experiments with animals were on his agenda, which he infected with leprosy nodules from patients at the leprosy hospital in Kakako . He owed the surgeon Rudolf Virchow , with whom Arning corresponded, the recommendation to buy pigs for his experiments. This was followed by vaccination experiments on sick people.

He presented his outstanding experiment to the German Dermatological Society in Prague in 1889 . This experiment concerned the 48-year-old Polynesian Keanu , which he called “material” . Keanu was married and had two children. According to his lecture about his test subject , Keanu was a “bestial murderer”. However, Arning complained about the deafness of his test subject, which is why he was unable to further determine the prisoner's history. The information about Keanu on the part of the authorities, however, should not necessarily be taken very seriously, since Hawaiians "tend to give frivolous or even lying information". The experiment at Keanu began on September 28, 1884. According to his animal experiments Arning took a girl that "for years the image of an exquisite tuberous leprosy offered" (Arning), a leprosy nodules and planted it Keanu one. He observed the course of the disease and photographed his test subject. In 1888 Arning was able to evaluate his experiment successfully: “Ears thickened and considerably enlarged, as did the skin of the forehead; The cheeks, nose and chin show flat nodular infiltrations , the face generally shows the characteristic leonina face (...) hands puffed up. ”With this, Arning was able to prove for the first time that leprosy is contagious. However, further experiments of this kind were necessary for the scientific results. Keanu was exiled to the leper island of Molokai in February 1889 and died in March 1889.

Ethnological activities in the South Seas

During his research project in the South Seas, he also worked as an ethnologist and “collected” 300 pieces of Polynesian cult objects for the Berlin Museum of Ethnology . He was honored for this by the physiologist Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), the chairman of the Berlin Academy Board of Trustees, because Arning “collected with great success everything that could still be found in the equipment, weapons, jewelry of that quickly and quickly wasting population Bergmann wrote: “In addition to his medical research, Arning plundered the bones and skulls of chiefs and priests from grave caves and dissected the dead against the resistance of the Polynesian population.” He reported to the Berlin Academy about his working conditions : “The material he brought with him consists of the organ parts, some brains , spinal marks and extremities, which are kept separate from 18 sections . When the Kanaks were vigilant, I only managed to put entire organs aside for conservation in the rarest cases. ”237 photo plates are in the possession of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg. Digitized copies of these documents were given to the Hawaiian Historical Society in 1998 .

Branch in Hamburg

After this stay, Arning settled in Hamburg in 1887 as a specialist in skin and venereal diseases. In 1888 he married Helene Blohm , daughter of the Hamburg patrician and businessman JE Blohm. Before he took over the position as senior physician at the Department of Skin Diseases and Syphilis at the General Hospital St. Georg - his competitor and ultimately the inferior competitor was Paul Gerson Unna  - he declined calls to the dermatological extraordinary offices in Kiel and Marburg . After the University of Hamburg was founded in 1919, Arning was made an adjunct professor , and the department in the St. Georg General Hospital was elevated to the status of a university clinic , as Eppendorf still lacked the prerequisites for simultaneous research and patient care at that time .

Arning retired at the age of 69 . Until his death at the age of 82 he received numerous honors at home and abroad.

A dermatological preparation was named after Arning, the so-called " Arning tincture ".

Eduard Arning was buried in the Ohlsdorfer Friedhof in Hamburg, grid square P 24 (above the water tower on Cordesallee).

Works

• Further contribution to the clinic and anatomy of neuritis leprosa with Max Nonne , 1893
• Ethnographic notes from Hawaii , Friederichsen, de Gruyter & Co., Hamburg 1931
• The new slide plate . In: Photographische Rundschau, 14th year, Knapp, Halle / S., 1900, p. 85ff.

See also

Human material

literature

• Gabriele Betancourt Nuñez: Arning, Eduard . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 18-20 .
• Anna Bergmann : Fatal human experiments in colonial areas. The leprosy research of the doctor Eduard Arning in Hawaii 1883–1886 . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (ed.): “… Power and share in world domination.” Berlin and German colonialism . Unrast-Verlag. Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-024-2
• Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde): Eduard Arning Collection at the Hawaiian Historical Society , In: Notes & Queries, Hawaiian Journal of History, 29 (1998), pp. 79–183
• SB Kammandel: Eduard Christian Arning (1855–1936). Life and scientific work, especially his trip to the Hawaiian Islands from 1883–1886 to study leprosy. Medical dissertation, Hanover 1994

Web links

• Literature by and about Eduard Arning in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Eduard Arning in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Leprosy Museum, exhibition of leprosy moulages
• Biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celebrity Graves