Franz Schuh (doctor)

Franz Schuh, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber , 1843

Franz Schuh (born October 17, 1804 in Scheibbs ( Lower Austria ), † December 22, 1865 in Vienna ) was an Austrian doctor. He undertook the first puncture of the pericardium and introduced ether anesthesia in Austria.

Life

Schuh was a primary surgeon, surgeon and university professor at the Vienna General Hospital , which was still an exception around 1840. Medicine and surgery were separate at that time, and there was only a unified medical status from 1872 onwards. There were only a few medical doctors who were active as surgeons. Schuh was one of them, and demonstrated the importance of physical medical examination even for surgeons. It was he who brought together the pathological-anatomical findings of Karl Rokitansky and the exact examination methods of Josef von Škodas with the then purely manual surgery and thus paved the way for Theodor Billroth .

With the results of Škoda, which he checked in animal experiments, Schuh learned to recognize, monitor and treat effusions in the chest and abdomen. On this basis, in 1840 he performed one of the world's first pericardial infusion punctures. He thus achieved considerable international attention. Because of the risk of infection, punctures were only performed in life-threatening conditions. Fatal wound infections after successful surgical interventions were commonplace.

Years later Schuh took over the American invention of ether anesthesia . He first tried out the method on animals and healthy people before he was one of the first surgeons on the continent to perform an amputation under ether anesthesia on January 28, 1847.

Schuh died in December 1865 of a malignant fever and blood decomposition - possibly a septic infection. A clinical picture from which many of Schuh's patients died. It was not until two years after Schuh's death that the British surgeon Joseph Lister developed the antiseptic method , arguably the most important advance in surgery after the invention of anesthesia. This already enabled Schuh's successor Billroth to operate under much better conditions.

In 1906 the Franz-Schuh-Gasse in Vienna- Favoriten (10th district) was named after him.

literature

• On the knowledge of pseudoplasms , LW Seidel, Vienna, 1851
• Pathology and Therapy of Pseudoplasmas , 1854
• Treatises in the Field of Surgery and Operations , 1867
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Schuh, Franz . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 32nd part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1876, pp. 137–141 ( digitized version ).
• Ernst Gurlt :  Schuh, Franz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 32, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1891, pp. 653-655.
• H. Moser:  Schuh Franz. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 11, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-7001-2803-7 , p. 309 f. (Direct links on p. 309 , p. 310 ).
• Medical History Doctors Week , Volume 16 No. 31, 2002
• Gabriela Schmidt:  Schuh, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 669 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Franz Schuh  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Franz Schuh in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Entry for Franz Schuh in the database of the state's memory for the history of the state of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )