Friedrich Oesterlen (physician)

Friedrich Oesterlen (born March 22, 1812 in Murrhardt , † March 19, 1877 in Stuttgart ) was a German doctor.

Life

education

Oesterlen was the son of the then subordinate doctor and later Prince Hohenlohe-Oehringen's personal doctor Dr. Christian Oesterlen was born.

After acquiring knowledge of botany and physics as a high school student , Oesterlen began studying medicine in Tübingen . His processing of the prize assignment on "Unity or majority of the venereal contagions" was crowned with the award in 1833 and after passing exams with flying colors, Oesterlen endeavored in Würzburg , Vienna and Paris to acquire the technical skills in research methods and operations At that time Tübingen did not offer an opportunity.

Employed as an assistant doctor in his hometown Murrhardt in 1835, Oesterlen married the daughter of a country clergyman in 1838. In his spare time, in addition to his medical service, Oesterlen published scientific works and investigations, such as the one on the stomach of cancer (Müller's archive) and the "Experiments on the Imbibition of Animal Structures" and the "Experiments on the Imbibition of Animal Structures" published in the first two volumes of the Roser-Wunderlich archive important "experiments on the transition of the regulatory mercury into the blood mass" soon made the name of the young country doctor known in the scientific world. In 1841 Oesterlen took a long vacation to familiarize himself with microscopic technology at Henle in Zurich .

academic career

In 1843, Oesterlen completed his habilitation in Tübingen and, as a private lecturer, read with great success about remedies, general pathology, etc. The deepening in the study of remedies made him recognize the sad state in which this discipline was at that time and which appeared as a reforming work in 1844 “Handbuch der Heilmittelellehre”, which hit the mark and because of its strictly scientific version and thoroughness, it became a valuable “handbook” even for such people and remained for decades, for whom his criticism and his doubts seemed to go too far. In 1846 Oesterlen accepted a call as a full professor at the University of Dorpat . Here he first read remedies and in the second semester took over the management of the medical clinic. He soon made himself popular with students and colleagues through his earnest pursuit, his unusual teaching skills and his being humane with all his energies; but he was overworked, his wife became sickly, a vacation request was refused (1848!) and many other things came up to him in a disturbing and disgruntled manner.

So he withdrew from the Russian civil service, which he was reluctant to grant, and returned to Germany in June 1848, initially to Stuttgart . With this step, Oesterlen's academic career, which had been founded under favorable circumstances, came to an end. He had not doubted that he would be able to win a position again at a German university. He was deceived in this hope, and so from now on he was dependent on continuing to serve his science without the support for the cause and person associated with an academic position. In a difficult struggle he upheld science and promoted it to the best of his ability, but he could not be spared seeing that so much of what he had started was finished by others and that the full success of him, the self-reliant and isolated , was not granted.

After a year spent in Stuttgart, in which he had taken a practical course in chemistry with Fehling , he moved to Heidelberg , where he held lectures on remedies and hygiene as a private lecturer and published the Hygieine Handbook in 1850 . This work was initially based on French and English models; It was the first to publicize the state of public and private health care that had been achieved in those countries in Germany and to arouse the interest of doctors and other groups in these important questions. In his hope of attaining an extraordinary professorship for the teaching of medicinal products in Heidelberg (the handbook had already appeared in its fifth edition), disappointed, Oesterlen gave up the teaching activity to which he had been called in front of many. From 1854 onwards he spent a number of busy years in Stuttgart and in between in 1856 made a long trip to England and Belgium , which was very useful to him and the later editions of the Hygieine Handbook.

Late years

In 1858 he moved to Zurich, where he published the first German journal for hygiene and medical statistics, for which the time had not yet come. As the fruit of almost twenty years of arduous work, the “Handbuch der medicinischen Statistik” appeared in 1865, a rich treasure trove for later workers in this field. Oesterlen had become dear to the country and people of Switzerland ; High-speed tours in the Alps were the only relaxation that temporarily cheered his increasingly gloomy mood. In order to be closer to his beloved mountains, Oesterlen moved to Glarus in 1869 .

Because of his wife's deteriorating health and for patriotic motives, he returned to Germany in 1870. In May 1876 he completed the third edition of his Hygieine in Stuttgart. His wife died in September of the same year, and he himself died of a stroke barely six months later, on March 19, 1877 .

Works (selection)

• “Historical-critical account of the dispute about the unity or majority of the venereal contagies”, 1836.
• "Contributions to the Physiology of the Healthy and Diseased Organism", 1843.
• “Medicinal Logic”, 1852.
• “Man and his physical preservation. Hygienic Letters for Other Readers ”, 1859.
• "The epidemics, their causes, laws and control", 1873.

literature

• Otto Oesterlen:  Oesterlen, Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, p. 511 f.