Hans Guggisberg

Hans Guggisberg (born February 3, 1880 in Bern , † April 11, 1977 there ) was a Swiss gynecologist and obstetrician .

Live and act

Hans Guggisberg was born on February 3, 1880 in Bern. His father, Rudolf Guggisberg (1853–1913), was a teacher in Münchenbuchsee and Bern, councilor and police director of the city of Bern, councilor, colonel of the infantry and commander of Bern. After attending primary school and high school in Bern, Hans Guggisberg studied medicine at the universities of Bern and Munich from 1898 to 1903 . From 1903 to 1906 Hans Guggisberg worked under Peter Müller as an assistant doctor at the Bern Women's Hospital. He earned the title of Doctor medicinae with his work on complications of retroflexio uteri and their influence on operative therapy . He continued his training as an assistant to the Swiss surgeon Otto Lanz , a student of Theodor Kocher , at the Surgical Clinic in Amsterdam .

In 1906 Hans Guggisberg married his wife Hanny Andres and in the same year opened a practice as a gynecologist on Bubenbergplatz in Bern. In addition to his practice, he was a research assistant at the Bacteriological Institute under Wilhelm Kolle . Here he researched questions of serology and immunology and completed his habilitation in 1908 with a thesis on the clinical use of opsonins in pregnant women and women who have recently given birth .

In 1911, at the age of 31, Guggisberg was elected to succeed Peter Müller, who had headed the cantonal maternity hospital from 1874 to 1911, and was appointed adjunct professor. In 1912 Hans Guggisberg was appointed full professor, chair holder of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Bern and at the same time director of the Cantonal Women's Hospital in Bern .

Under his directorate, the University Women's Clinic was enlarged and modernized several times. The Bern women's hospital developed under the direction of Guggisberg from a “poor hospital” to a prestigious university hospital. He also held the office of dean of the medical faculty twice and was elected rector magnificus of the university in 1919 . His rectorate speech was devoted to inheritance and transmission . He was also a co-founder of the Engeried Private Clinic , President of the Medical District Association of Bern-Stadt, long-time President of the Medical Association of the Canton of Bern , President of the Medical College of the Canton of Bern, President of the Board of Directors of the Inselspital, founder and President of the Gynecological Society of German-speaking Switzerland, member of the Swiss Senate Academy of Medical Sciences , as well as member of the Board of Trustees of the Marcel Benoist Foundation .

Almost 200 scientific papers and several textbooks document Guggisberg's research activities. He played a major role in the boom that obstetrics and gynecology experienced at that time. Some of his investigations are summarized in the handbook Biology and Pathology of Women . For a long time this was considered the standard work in obstetrics and gynecology.

Guggisberg was one of the first doctors to test ergotamine , an alkaloid from ergot , in obstetrics and gynecology. Through his investigations, the indications and the dosage of the pure ergot alkaloid were clarified. Together with Walter Neuweiler , he carried out experimental studies on the placenta . As early as 1926, both of them attempted to breed the human placenta in vitro .

Hans Guggisberg was considered an excellent surgeon. This is also borne out by his obstetric surgery course , his teaching on how to use the birthing forceps , the surgical instrument that the English obstetrician Edmund Chapman described as "the noble instrument". Guggisberg has incorporated his many years of experience as a university lecturer into his textbook on surgical obstetrics and the textbook on gynecology . The obstetrical surgery teaching (1916) may be known today even as the standard work, despite great and beneficent progress for mother and child, in manual concerns. However, with improved perinatal monitoring of the child, the indications for forceps surgery have been refined.

As a university professor, Guggisberg succeeded in getting students excited about his subject. His clearly structured lectures and courses, which also included the obstetric surgery course (1914), were always well prepared and adapted to the requirements of the future general practitioner.

However, Guggisberg is also regarded as the central figure in Bern eugenics , who advocated and carried out forced sterilization for psychiatric reasons.

Hans Guggisberg died on April 11, 1977 at the age of 98 in his native Bern. The funeral service took place on April 14, 1977 in the chapel of the Burgerspital Bern.

Fonts (selection)

• About complications of retroflexio uteri and their influence on operative therapy. Buchdruckerei Neukomm & Zimmermann, Bern 1905 ( dissertation , University of Bern, January 11, 1905).
• About the clinical use of opsonins in pregnant women and women who have recently given birth. In: Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Vol. 64 (1909), pp. 136-165 ( habilitation thesis ).
• Obstetric surgery theory. Published by Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1916.
• Inheritance and transmission. Rector's speech given at the 85th foundation ceremony of the University of Bern. Bern November 22, 1919. Paul Haupt, Bern 1920.

Honors

• Haller Medal
• Anna Seiler Medal
• Honorary membership of the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics

literature

• Jakob Klaesi : Prof. Dr. med. Hans Guggisberg for his 70th birthday on February 5th. In: The Bund . Vol. 59 (1950), p. 3.
• Fritz Ludwig: Prof. Hans Guggisberg on his 70th birthday. In: Swiss Medical Weekly . Vol. 10 (1950), p. 265 f.
• Max Berger: Prof. Dr. med. Hans Guggisberg in memory. In: The Bund. Vol. 86 (1977), p. 13.
• Paul Dübi , Max Berger: 100 Years of the Cantonal Women's Hospital in Bern (1876–1976). Paul Haupt, Bern 1976, pp. 42-46.
• Paul Casparis (Dean), Emil Bürgi (Vice Dean), Johann Friedrich de Quervain, Carl Wegelin, Fritz Ludwig, Rudolf Karl Gustav von Fellenberg, Walter Neuweiler, Jules A. Mennet: Festschrift for Prof. Dr. med. Hans Guggisberg on his 25th anniversary in office (1911–1936).
• RW Moser: Hans Guggisberg (1980-1977). Tribute to a Swiss gynecologist. Der Gynäkologe 3 (2014), 219–222, doi : 10.1007 / s00129-014-3333-0

Web links

• Photo by Hans Guggisberg of the University of Bern

Individual evidence

1. ^ DA Guggisberg, Guggisberg Genealogies Redondo Beach, Calif. c1999
2. ↑ Andrea Weibel: Guggisberg, Rudolf. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
3. ^ DA Guggisberg, Guggisberg Genealogies Redondo Beach, Calif. c1999
4. ↑ Rectors ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2012 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. of the University of Bern 1834 until today. 
5. ↑ History ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2014 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. , Website of the Marcel Benoist Foundation.  
6. ↑ Josef Halban , Ludwig Seitz (ed.): Biology and Pathology of Woman. Handbook of Gynecology and Obstetrics. 9 volumes. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin, Vienna 1924–1929.
7. ↑ Hans Guggisberg, Walter Neuweiler: About breeding experiments of the human placenta in vitro. In: Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie. Vol. 50 (1926), p. 1437.
8. ^ Roland W. Moser: Placenta research at the University of Bern. In: Swiss Medical Journal . Vol. 92 (2011), pp. 2022-2025.
9. ↑ Edmund Chapman, quoted from: Helen King: Midwifery, obstetrics and the rise of gynaecology. The uses of a sixteenth-century compendium. Ashgate, Aldershot 2007, p. 137.
10. ↑ Thomas Huonker : Diagnosis: "morally defective". Castration, sterilization and racial hygiene in the service of Swiss social policy and psychiatry 1890–1970. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-280-06003-6 , p. 107 ( online ).
11. ↑ Honorary members of the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics .
12. ↑ The Festschrift is published in the Swiss Medical Weekly article by Prof. Dr. Dedicated to Hans Guggisberg on the occasion of his 25th anniversary in office (vol. 66, no. 46, November 14, 1936, page 1105). The Festschrift cannot be found in any library, not even in the estate of Hans Guggisberg at the Institute for Medical History at the University of Bern. It must be assumed that it was given to the jubilee as a manuscript and not published.