Gustav Kuschinsky

Gustav Kuschinsky , actually Gustav Wilhelm Franz Kuschinsky , (born January 10, 1904 in Berlin , † November 17, 1992 in Wiesbaden ) was a German doctor and pharmacologist . Under his leadership, the Pharmacological Institute of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz became the center of pharmacology in Germany after the Second World War.

Life

Kuschinsky's parents were the businessman Gustav Kuschinky and his wife Johanna geb. Witmoser. The son attended the humanistic Friedrichwerder high school in Berlin. After graduating from high school in 1922, he studied medicine in Berlin and one semester each in Tübingen, Marburg and Innsbruck. In Berlin he was particularly impressed by the lectures given by the toxicologist Louis Lewin . In 1928 he was awarded a doctorate in Kiel on the basis of a dissertation prepared by the internist Alfred Schittenhelm. med. PhD. After substituting in the practice, he worked from 1929 at Paul Trendelenburg at the Pharmacological Institute of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, where he met Hans Gremels (1896 to 1949), Otto Krayer , Edith Bülbring and Marthe Vogt, among others . During Trendelenburg's severe tuberculosis and after his untimely death in 1931, Otto Krayer was acting head of the institute until Wolfgang Heubner took over the chair in 1932. Kuschinsky completed his habilitation with him in 1933 . In the same year, the emergency community of German science , the predecessor of the German Research Foundation , placed him in a professorship for pharmacology at Tongji University in Shanghai , which had been founded in 1907 as the "German Medical School for Chinese" and taught in German. In 1936 he had to break off his work in China prematurely due to severe tuberculosis and spend half a year in a sanatorium in Davos .

He then returned to Berlin as Heubner's senior assistant. Heubner was an opponent of National Socialism . Both opponents such as Otto Krayer and Robert Havemann and staunch supporters such as Hermann Druckrey and Norbert Brock worked for him . Kuschinsky joined the NSDAP in 1937. In the winter semester of 1938/39 he represented the pharmacology chair in Graz , which had become free after the “Anschluss” of Austria through the racially motivated expulsion of Otto Loewis . Back in Berlin, he followed a call to the pharmacology chair at what was then known as the German Charles University in Prague ; The owner, Emil Starkenstein , had also been expelled from this chair for racist reasons. The Czech University in Prague was closed in 1939 and its Pharmacological Institute was added to that of the German Charles University. Kuschinsky was in Prague until 1944 Lecturer League Leader in the National Socialist German Lecturer Association . According to the testimony of the Czech pharmacologist Helena Rašková (1913 to 2010), who made a significant contribution to the development of pharmacology in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, he had a good relationship with his Czech employees. He had the entire equipment of the Czech institute stored in boxes so that in 1945 the Czech colleagues could take them over intact.

In 1938 Kuschinsky had Ingeborg Maria geb. Stoehr married, with whom he had three children. One son, Klaus Udo (* 1939), like his father, became a pharmacologist, his daughter Gisela Renate (* 1942) became a doctor at the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices , and the younger son, Wolfgang Rainer (* 1944), became a physiologist. The family was able to leave Prague before the Soviet troops marched in and found accommodation in Erlangen and later Wiesbaden. It was there that Kuschinsky was offered the chair of pharmacology at the University of Mainz, which was re-established on May 22, 1946 after a break of 123 years. The institute was initially housed in a cramped location in a former tuberculosis ward. Materials for expansion were taken from the ruins of the city or purchased on the black market in exchange for wine that the French occupying forces had confiscated and given to the university as a construction aid. However, the number of students, doctoral candidates and academics grew rapidly, and in 1970 the institute moved into a new high-rise building, as before close to the clinic, serving other theoretical-medical subjects in addition to pharmacology and with a magnificent view of the city and cathedral. Mainz became the center of German post-war pharmacology, with the first German-language post-war textbook, the most important congresses of German-speaking pharmacologists and the work of many researchers who shaped pharmacological research. In 1972 Kuschinsky retired, but continued to work on his books. Twenty years later he died after a brief illness.

plant

research

Around 1930 the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim synthesized derivatives of adrenaline . Part of the pharmacological examination took place in the Pharmacological Institute in Berlin. Kuschinsky's first scientific topic under Paul Trendelenburg was the pharmacological analysis of the adrenaline derivative synephrine , which was used for a long time under the trade name Sympatol ^® to increase blood pressure , and phenylephrine , which became important for basic research as a selective agonist at α ₁ -adrenoceptors .

Later, under Heubner, Kuschinsky concentrated on the secretion of hormones. In his habilitation thesis in 1933 he demonstrated for the first time that the thyroid hormone thyroxine inhibits the secretion of thyrotropin from the anterior pituitary gland ; it was the discovery of the thyrotropic control loop . He could only hint at a further problem: "However, where the primary stimulus for hormone production in the anterior pituitary comes from remains unexplained." Today, the problem has been solved with the discovery of the hypothalamic release hormone thyreoliberin .

In Prague, Kuschinsky's particular interest was the involvement of tubular secretion in the formation of urine in the kidney. He continued to pursue all three topics in Mainz.

Teaching

Kuschinsky attached great importance to good teaching for the students and good further education for the next generation of scientists. He set up an experimental course in pharmacology and toxicology in Mainz, which was not required by the licensing regulations for doctors at the time . Regular literary seminars in the tradition of Paul Trendelenburg should teach the assistants critical thinking.

With his colleague Heinz Lüllmann , he wrote the first post-war textbook in his field: “Short textbook on pharmacology”. The first edition appeared in 1964. By 2010, 17 editions had appeared, plus English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish and Czech translations. The 17th edition, published in 1999 after Kuschinsky's death, is preceded for the first time by the motto:

"A drug that is claimed to have no side effects is strongly suspected of not having a major effect."

- Gustav Kuschinsky

As early as 1956, Kuschinsky had published a "pocket book on modern drug treatment". Up to 2010, 13 editions had appeared, the more recent ones edited by Kuschinsky's student Hasso Scholz.

The Spring Conference in Mainz

At the congresses of the German Pharmacological Society - today the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology - the detailed main presentations by established scientists predominated so much that the younger ones could hardly present their results. Therefore, in April 1960, Kuschinsky invited to a conference in Mainz with only 10-minute short lectures, followed by a 5-minute discussion. Main presentations and an extra-scientific framework program were not planned. Abstracts of the presentations have been published in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . For the 1st spring conference in 1960, 51 abstracts were printed, for the 50th spring conference in 2009 there were 508. The 51st spring conference 2010 with 450 abstracts was the last in Mainz for the time being. Later spring meetings took place in different cities.

The series of meetings was obviously a success. Its importance was increased by the fact that from 1971 the annual general meeting of the German Pharmacological Society was called in connection with the spring meetings in Mainz, as well as the meetings of the editors and reviewers of Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive.

student

Kuschinsky's commitment to teaching and continuing education bore fruit. Numerous successful pharmacological researchers were his students or spent some time in his institute. These include (in the order in which they joined the institute) Werner Förster, who later held a chair in Halle (Saale) , Heinz Lüllmann, whom he arranged for a research stay with Edith Bülbring, a pharmacologist in Oxford, who he knew from Berlin , and who later became a professor in Kiel ; Erik Westermann, later professor in Hanover ; Erich Muscholl, for whom he arranged a research stay in 1956 with the pharmacologist Marthe Vogt, who was also known to him from Berlin, in Edinburgh and who later became his successor in Mainz; Hellmut Brunner, later with Ciba-Geigy AG in Basel; Georges Peters, later professor in Lausanne ; Ullrich Trendelenburg , later professor in Würzburg ; Wolfgang Klaus, later professor in Cologne ; Harald Reuter , later professor in Bern ; Uwe Wollert, later professor for pharmacology in Mainz; Hasso Scholz , later professor in Hamburg ; Karl Joachim Netter , who headed his own department for toxicology in Mainz and later became a professor in Marburg ; Josef Krieglstein , later also professor in Marburg; Konradöffelholz, later professor for pharmacology in Mainz; Eberhard Jähnchen, later clinical pharmacologist in Bad Krozingen ; Georg-Friedrich Kahl , employee of the department for toxicology and later professor in Göttingen ; Heinz Kilbinger and Hermann Nawrath, later professors for pharmacology in Mainz.

recognition

Kuschinsky was an honorary member of the German Pharmacological Society and the German Physiological Society. At the second World Congress of the International Union of Pharmacology (IUPHAR) in Prague in 1963, he was awarded the Purkinje Medal of the Czechoslovak Purkinje Society. It was his favorite recognition. In 1982 the German Pharmacological Society awarded him the Schmiedeberg plaque , its highest scientific award.

Individual evidence

1. ^ H. Greim: Obituaries - Prof. Dr. med. Gustav Kuschinsky. In: DGPT-Mitteilungen 1993; No. 13, pp. 12-13
2. ↑ Hedwig Langecker: Pharmacological-Pharmacognostic Institute, Medical Faculty of the German University in Prague. In: Athineos Philippu: History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries. Berenkamp-Verlag 2004, pp. 566-579. ISBN 3-85093-180-3
3. ^ ^{A b c} Erich Muscholl : Pharmacological Institute, Faculty of Medicine of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In: Athineos Philippu: History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries. Berenkamp-Verlag 2004, pp. 465-476. ISBN 3-85093-180-3
4. ↑ G. Kuschinsky: 50 years of doctor and researcher. In: Therapy of the Present 1978; 117: 975-1008
5. ↑ Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy. Synchron-Verlag, Heidelberg 2004, p. 105. ISBN 3-935025-68-8
6. ^ E. Muscholl: Obituary for Professor Helena Rašková (1913-2010). In: Biospektrum 2010; 16: p. 466
7. ↑ Fred Lembeck, Peter Holzer and Bernhard A. Peskar: Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, Medical Faculty of the Karl-Franzens University Graz. In: Athineos Philippu: History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries. Berenkamp-Verlag 2004, pp. 256-270. ISBN 3-85093-180-3
8. ↑ G. Kuschinsky: About the conditions of the secretion of the thyrotropic hormone of the pituitary gland. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 1933; 170: 510-533
9. ↑ G. Kuschinsky and H. Lüllmann: Short textbook of pharmacology. Stuttgart, Georg Thieme Verlag 1964.
10. ↑ Heinz Lüllmann and Klaus Mohr: Pharmacology and Toxicology. Stuttgart, Georg Thieme Verlag 1999.
11. ↑ G. Kuschinsky: Pocket book of modern drug treatment. Stuttgart, Georg Thieme Verlag 1956.
12. ↑ Klaus Starke: There can be a trace of our earth floors - on pharmacologists and pharmacology. In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology 2009; 380: 465-471
13. ^ Jürgen Lindner and Heinz Lüllmann: Pharmacological institutes and biographies of their directors. Aulendorf, Editio Cantor Verlag 1996, there pp. 104-105. ISBN 3-87193-172-1