Friedrich Sertürner

Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner

Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Sertürner (born June 19, 1783 in Neuhaus ; † February 20, 1841 in Hameln ) was a German pharmacist and discoverer of morphine .

origin

Bust of the FWA Sertürner in front of the palace gardens in Schloss Neuhaus

Memorial plaque to Sertürner at the wedding house in Hameln

Sertürner was born in 1783 in the residential town of Neuhaus in the prince-bishopric of Paderborn as the son of the land surveyor and architect Josephus Simon Sertürner and Maria Theresia Brockmann, who was in the service of the prince-bishop . His father died when he was 15 years old, leaving the family penniless so that Sertürner had to give up his intention to follow in his father's footsteps.

Life

In 1799 he began an apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Paderborn with the court pharmacist Franz Anton Cramer with the assistant examination in 1803.

In 1805, while still working as a pharmacist's assistant in Paderborn , he succeeded in isolating morphine from the drug opium , the dried milky sap of the opium poppy , with the majority of the experiments taking place in 1804. He named the alkaloid he found after Morpheus , the Greek god of dreams, as it caused sleep. In the following years he first investigated the effects of this substance on dogs and mice. In 1806 there was a first publication about it in the Journal der Pharmacie by Johann Bartholomäus Trommsdorff . The discovery did not attract much attention, however, and it was not until the second publication in 1817 in the better-known Annals of Physics that it achieved general recognition, especially after Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac had arranged for the translation into French in the same year (France was the leading nation in the Chemistry). He also reported on a self-experiment on himself and three friends, whereby the dose was so high in the end that they only escaped death with an emetic. In addition to morphine, he was also the first to isolate meconic acid from opium.

Via France, Sertürner also found recognition in Germany and received his doctorate in 1817 in Jena in absentia for his work on morphine . He became a member of many scientific societies and in 1841 an honorary member of the North German Pharmacists' Association.

The discovery of morphine was also a change in the ideas of the time, when it was the first time an alkaline herbal active ingredient - a representative of the new active ingredient class of alkaloids (the name was given in 1819 by the pharmacist in Halle Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meißner ). Before that, it had always been assumed that the herbal ingredients were only available as acids. Other chemists who had previously investigated the active ingredients of opium ( Antoine Baumé , Charles Derosne in France, for example, found narcotine in opium) escaped the discovery of morphine.

The attribution of the first description of morphine was controversial. Bernard Courtois succeeded in isolation as early as 1804 in Armand Séguin's laboratory . Immediately afterwards he left the École polytechnique and went into industry. Séguin presented the results in 1804, but did not publish them until 1814. On the basis of this publication, Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin claimed priority of the discovery for Séguin in 1816, who had not mentioned Courtois in his article. The priority dispute that was waged over his discovery in France bitter Sertürner, but the Académie des sciences finally decided in his favor and awarded him the prestigious Prix Montyon in 1831. Its use as a medicine and especially as a pain reliever began as early as 1820 in France and Germany - François Magendie published on the medical effects as early as 1818. Because of the bitter taste and induced nausea, oral administration was not optimal, and greater success as a pain reliever was only achieved after administration as an injection ( Charles-Gabriel Pravaz ).

Professionally, Sertürner joined the Rats-Apotheke on the Long Bridge in Einbeck at Easter 1805 . After the freedom of trade in the Kingdom of Westphalia had been introduced under Napoleon, Sertürner acquired a patent for the establishment of a second pharmacy in Einbeck after passing his pharmacy exam in 1809. After a few successful years, however, he had to give up his profession temporarily in 1817, because after the fall of the French-Westphalian government, the freedom of trade was revoked and he was not given the management of the Einbeck Rats-Apotheke.

In 1821, Sertürner, as the successor to Johann Friedrich Westrumb , acquired the Rats-Apotheke in Hameln . Here he worked until his death in 1841. He remained scientifically active, published chemistry books and in a scientific journal he founded. Sertürner also developed a theory of cholera, which was ignored during his lifetime. Sertürner died of complications from gout , which he also relieved with morphine.

After his death, he was transferred from Hameln to Einbeck and buried in the Bartholomäus chapel at Altendorfer Tor.

family

In 1821 Sertürner married Eleonore von Rettberg, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Leopold Christoph von Rettberg. The couple had four daughters and three sons. Her daughter Ida married Wilhelm Best (1799–1886) in 1852, a son of General Carl Conrad Best . His son Carl Franz (1821–1904) became a senior judge in Hanover. His son Viktor Sertürner became (1834–1887) a pharmacist and his father's successor. In 1873 he founded the first chemical factory in Hameln.

Friedrich Sertürner had been a Freemason in the Einbeck Lodge Georg zu den three Pillars since 1807 .

Honors

In the City Museum Einbeck an exhibition can be visited on Sertürner. In addition to Paderborn and Hamelin Sertürnerstraße, streets in several other cities also bear his name. A street and the hospital in Einbeck are named after Sertürner. On the Venusberg in Bonn , not far from the university clinic, a street is named after him. There is a Sertürnerstraße in Münster, which is located near the campus of the Münster University Hospital.

Fonts

• Presentation of pure poppy acid (opium acid) together with a chemical analysis of the opium. In: Journal der Pharmacie , Volume 14, 1806, pp. 47-93.
• About morphine, a new salty base, and meconic acid, as the main constituents of opium. In: Annalen der Physik , NF, Volume 25, 1817, pp. 56-89.
• Urgent request to the German fatherland, in relation to the oriental breakup. Goettingen 1831.

literature

• Christoph Friedrich:  Sertürner, Friedrich Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 271-273 ( digitized version ).
• Klaus Meyer: On the track of morphine , Pharmazeutische Zeitung , No. 16/2004.
• N. Risch: Pain - a blessing and a curse . Forschungsforum Paderborn, issue 6-2003, pp. 56–61.
• Ch. Friedrich: On the 150th anniversary of the death of the discoverer of morphine, Friedrich W. Sertürner , Pharmazeutische Zeitung, Volume 136, 1991, pp. 1935–1941.
• M. Seefelder: Opium, a cultural history , dtv non-fiction book, Frankfurt 1990.
• Klaus Meyer, R.-D. Müller, H. Säuberlich: FW Sertürner, discoverer of morphine , catalog of the exhibition for the 200th birthday, Paderborn 1983.
• G. Kerstein: About the time of the discovery of morphine by Sertürner , Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung / Süddeutsche Apotheker Zeitung, Volume 94, 1954, p. 968.
• Franz Krömeke (ed.): Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner, the discoverer of morphine. Life picture and reprint of the original morphine works . Springer Verlag, Heidelberg 1984. ISBN 3-540-12357-1 . (first Jena 1925)

Fiction

• Otto Schumann-Ingolstadt: Morphine. The life novel of the discoverer of morphine Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner , Deutscher Apotheker-Verlag, Stuttgart 1955.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Sertürner  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Friedrich Sertürner  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Friedrich Sertürner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Friedrich Sertürner  in the German Digital Library
• Sertürner Society Einbeck eV
• The discovery of morphine 200 years ago ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), article by Christoph Friedrich in the Österreichische Apotheker-Zeitung, No. 21/2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Sertürner, Friedrich Wilhelm Adam. 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. 1322.
2. ^ NN: Analysis de l'Opium. Traduit de Gilbert's Annals of Physics; new episode, vol. XXV, p. 56, par M. Rose, pharmacien à Berlin. Annales de chimie et de physique 50 (1817), 21-42.
3. ↑ Séguin Premie Mémoire sur l'Opium , Annales de Chimie , vol 92, 1814, 225 (dated 1804).
4. ↑ Patricia Swain - Bernard Courtois (1777–1838), Famed for Discovering Iodine (1811), and His Life in Paris from 1798 ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 174 kB), 2007, American Chemical Society, Division of the History of Chemistry, 2007 Outstanding Paper Award ( Memento of the original from June 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 12, 2008.  
5. ↑ www.garnisonkirche-hameln.de/141_Best.htm ( Memento from October 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) .
6. ↑ Gesa Snell: The story of Dr. Paul Lohmann GmbH KG. The chemistry is right - since 1886 . Ed .: Dr. Paul Lohmann GmbH KG. 1st edition. Barton-Verlag, Weilerwist-Metternich 2018, ISBN 978-3-934648-24-1 , pp. 11 .