Georg Joseph Beer

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Georg Joseph Beer

Georg Joseph Beer (born December 23, 1763 in Vienna ; † April 11, 1821 ibid) was a Viennese Austrian ophthalmologist.

Georg Joseph Beer laid the foundations for scientifically based ophthalmology . In 1813 he founded the first university eye clinic in Vienna .

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Georg Joseph Beer was born in Vienna. His father was the administrator of the Queen's Monastery on Vienna's Josephsplatz , and he committed his son to a clerical career and to study theology at an early stage. His scientific and artistic inclinations prevailed, however, and he began to work as an anatomical draftsman and demonstrator for the ophthalmologist and anatomist Joseph Barth (1745-1818). Barth refused any ophthalmological training to Beer, who was pressing into ophthalmology. After seven years of service, Beer finally fell out with Barth and began studying medicine in Vienna in 1782 , which he successfully completed after three years of material hardship.

In 1786 he received his doctorate and opened an ophthalmological practice in his apartment, in which he used two rooms for the free inpatient treatment of destitute patients and also took care of them from his pocket. Even if he no longer had any financial worries, in the following years he had to survive severe hostility from his rival Barth (his former teacher) and his student Johann Adam Schmidt (1759-1809). Beer himself, on the other hand, often condescendingly criticized his colleagues and hardly left anyone unscathed. Only the relatively few scientists he recognized and admired were excluded.

In 1815 Beer concluded his commentary on the work “Monograph of the Gray State” by his former student Traugott Wilhelm Benedict (1785–1862), Professor of Surgery and Ophthalmology in Breslau from 1812 : “Truly! If every school year produced a single such freak in students, one would soon have to be more than tired of teaching ” . He didn’t leave his publishers good, so they switched from work to work, and he even criticized the clergy with sharp words.

Despite all the obstacles, Beer finally managed to prove himself as an ophthalmologist and ophthalmological teacher; his reputation grew and in 1802 he was able to qualify as a private lecturer. He was also a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences from 1801 . By 1803 he had already taught 289 doctors as part of "private courses on ophthalmology". In 1806 the state government began to honor Beer's charitable work for the treatment of the poor; his practice, which he had run from his own resources for 20 years, was converted into an ophthalmological outpatient clinic . Beer received a salary and now worked as an official "Stadtarmes-Ophthalmologist" .

His greatest goal, the separation of ophthalmology from surgery into an independent specialty, turned out to be a very difficult and lengthy process that powerful opponents tried to prevent. Repeated proposals and written requests from Beer's to establish a chair and a clinic for ophthalmology failed for years, until the government finally made Beer an extraordinary professor of ophthalmology in 1812 and approved an eye clinic, which on January 19, 1813 had two rooms with eight beds each went into operation. Here Beer worked together with his assistant and son-in-law Friedrich Jäger von Jaxtthal and made the clinic, which can be regarded as the first university eye clinic at all, to become the “home of European ophthalmology”.

Many great ophthalmologists of the 19th century spent part of their training here. The culmination of his persistent efforts was finally the full professorship of Beers in 1818. He had now achieved everything: his teaching post had become a full professor , ophthalmology was a compulsory medical subject and was read as a five-hour lecture over two semesters. Beer's great fame in the medical world was due to his teaching activities and his widely available textbooks on ophthalmology. He combined teaching, research and practice in a hitherto unusual way and his courses and lectures drew students, surgeons and ophthalmologists who wanted to continue their education from all over Europe and even from the New World to Vienna.

Due to a stroke with hemiplegia , Beer was unable to work in 1819.

Scientific work

In 1791 Beer wrote his "Practical Observations on Various, but especially those eye diseases which arise from general diseases of the body" , in which his romantic tendency towards the need for "wholeness" was already evident. But this book was judged badly just like his "Theory of Eye Diseases" from 1792, also because it was partly copied from the works of the surgery professor August Gottlieb Richter (1742–1812). Later on, Beer never mentioned his early works at all.

His main work “Theory of Eye Diseases” , published in two volumes in 1813 and 1817, received all the more praise. It established the emerging scientific ophthalmology of the 19th century. The work bears traits of natural philosophy and Brownianism , but is always based on the clinical-empirical view of the Vienna School . Beer was a Brownian , which can be demonstrated in the theoretical concepts of his work and which dominated his therapeutic line. But also the new natural philosophy doctrine, the "romantic" current, which from 1803 also pushed with power to the universities of Vienna, and dominated medical teaching in Vienna until around 1830, Beer could not entirely escape. Beer's bibliographical and medical-historical works received little recognition.

His surgical achievements include his use of intracapsular starling , a further development of cataract surgery . It also became a forerunner with the development of iridectomy for artificial pupillary formation, which was later taken over by Albrecht von Graefe and Louis-Auguste Desmarres (1810–1882).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 34.
personal data
SURNAME Beer, Georg Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physician, founder of scientific ophthalmology
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1763
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1821
Place of death Vienna