Heinrich Finkelstein

Heinrich Finkelstein

Heinrich Finkelstein (born July 31, 1865 in Leipzig , † January 28, 1942 in Santiago de Chile ) was a German pediatrician and pioneer of infant medicine .

Life

Heinrich Finkelstein was born on July 31, 1865 in Leipzig. His father was a merchant there and head of the Jewish community. From 1884 he studied natural sciences , particularly geology , in Munich and Leipzig , and received his doctorate. phil. Only then did he begin to study medicine , which he completed with a doctorate in 1897 . He chose paediatrics as his specialty . His teacher was Otto Heubner , whom he followed from Leipzig to Berlin when he received the first professorship for paediatrics at the Charité . Even as Heubner's assistant, Finkelstein published numerous scientific papers, and in 1899 he completed his habilitation.

From 1901 to 1918 Heinrich Finkelstein was the senior physician in charge of the children's asylum in Berlin on Kürassierstrasse and the municipal orphanage, where he combined medical skills with social commitment. In 1918, after the death of Adolf Baginsky , the important pediatrician with whom Janusz Korczak had also practiced, he became medical director of the Kaiser- und Kaiserin-Friedrich Children's Hospital in Berlin's working-class district of Wedding .

Heinrich Finkelstein was first a private lecturer , then an adjunct professor at Berlin University . Although he was also internationally respected and honored as a pediatrician , as a Jew he never received a full professorship.

Heinrich Finkelstein renounced a family and children of his own; he lived a secluded and modest life with his sister. His love was for the mountains. Hikes in the Alps were a source of strength for him all his life.

The takeover of power by the National Socialists and their anti-Jewish terror also had serious consequences for Heinrich Finkelstein. He retired on March 1, 1933. In 1935 he lost his teaching license and all titles. In 1936 he was invited to Chicago as a visiting professor . But he soon returned to Berlin because as an old man he didn't want to be a burden to anyone abroad.

It was not until the November pogrom of 1938 that he finally left Germany. Heinrich Finkelstein emigrated to Chile . He was too old and too sick to start all over again. The Popular Front government, in which Salvador Allende was Minister of Health, suspended him an honorary pension, which was withdrawn from him after the fall of this government. Colleagues from the University of Santiago got him a pro forma job as a hospital messenger, which ensured his daily bread, and called him in as a consultant in difficult cases.

Heinrich Finkelstein died on January 28, 1942 in Santiago de Chile . His grave is honored by the local university to this day.

Services

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Reinickendorfer Strasse 61, in Berlin-Wedding

His teacher Otto Heubner already valued Finkelstein as a careful observer at the bedside, distinguished by both learning and intellect .

As the medical director of the Kaiser and Kaiserin Friedrich Children's Hospital, Heinrich Finkelstein succeeded in reducing infant mortality to 4.3% by 1925 , a figure that was only undercut in Germany decades later.

Closely connected with clinical practice was his scientific work on nutritional disorders , skin diseases and birth-related damage to newborns. Together with Ludwig F. Meyer , he developed the first artificial infant formula , the protein milk . He saved the lives of numerous babies who suffered from nutritional disorders.

Finkelstein's main work is a textbook on infant diseases that became the standard work for generations of paediatricians in Europe and Latin America well into the post-war period. In it he summarized his experience and his conception of holistic medicine as follows:

"Only those will be able to correctly assess and successfully treat babies who are used to making the sick child and not the sick intestine the object of their attention."

As a doctor he always tried to spare the children fear and pain; diagnostic interventions are not there to satisfy the doctor's curiosity.

Finkelstein was way ahead of his time with his ideas of comprehensive public baby care , much of which was only realized decades later. As early as 1905 he demanded u. a. the expansion of statutory welfare for working pregnant women and women who have recently given birth , the introduction of adequate rest periods before and after childbirth , the creation of institutions that would enable mothers without accommodation to live together with their children for longer periods, the free delivery of perfect baby milk to the poor, as well as the establishment of nursing homes and hospitals for infants:

"The rich children live because all the conditions are met that guarantee their prosperity, the poor children die because food and care fail in dire need."

The Finkelstein rule is named after him.

On August 1, 2016 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at the house at Reinickendorfer Strasse 61 in Berlin-Wedding .

Works

• The Laubenstein near Hohen-Aschau. A contribution to the knowledge of the brachiopod facies of the lower alpine mastiff. In: New Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology. Supplement 6, pp. 37-104, 1888 (dissertation, University of Munich, 1888).
• About a case of congenital sacral tumor in a seven-week-old baby. (medical dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1897).
• About otitis media in infants. (Habilitation thesis, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, 1899).
• The diseases of infants caused by birth trauma (= Berlin Clinic. Issue 168). Fischer's medical bookstore, Berlin 1902.
• With Louis Ballin: Berlin's orphans and their meals in the urban children's asylum. A contribution to questions of the hospital treatment of infants. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1904 ( digitized ).
• Infant Diseases Textbook. 2 parts. Fischer's Medicinische Buchhandlung H. Kornfeld, Berlin 1905/1908/1912.
  • 2nd, completely revised edition: Springer, Berlin 1921.
  • 3rd, completely revised edition: Springer, Berlin 1924.
  • 4th, completely revised edition: Infant Diseases. Elsevier, Amsterdam 1938.
  • Spanish translation: Tratado de las enfermedades del niño de pecho. Translation of the 3rd German edition. Ed. Labor, Madrid / Buenos Aires 1929; 2nd edition (translation of the 3rd German edition). Ed. Labor, Barcelona 1932; Tratado de las enfermedades del lactante. 3rd edition (translation of the 4th German edition). Ed. Laboratory, Barcelona / Madrid / Buenos Aires / Rio de Janeiro 1941.
• With Ludwig F. Meyer : About protein milk. A contribution to the problem of artificial nutrition. In: Yearbook for Pediatrics and Physical Education. Vol. 71 (1910), Issue 5, pp. 525 ff., And Issue 6, p. 683 ff.
• Edited with Eugen Emanuel Galewsky, Ludwig Halberstaedter: Skin diseases and syphilis in infancy and childhood. An atlas. J. Springer, Berlin 1922.
• With Ferdinand Rohr: The treatment of tubercular peritoneal diseases in childhood (= collection of informal treatises from the field of digestive and metabolic diseases. Volume 8.1). Marhold, Halle a. S. 1922/23.
• The healthy baby. Safari Verlag, Berlin undated [1937].

literature

• Julius Pagel : Finkelstein, Heinrich , in: Biographical Lexicon of Outstanding Doctors of the Nineteenth Century . Berlin and Vienna 1901, column 504
• Langley Porter: A Medical Leader Visits California. In: California and Western Medicine. 1924 (July), p. 363
• LFM (d. I. Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer): Heinrich Finkelstein. In: CV newspaper. Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums Vol. 14 (1935), No. 46, Supplement 5.
• Iwan Rosenstern: Heinrich Finkelstein (1865-1942). In: The Journal of Pediatrics . Vol. 49, Issue 4, Oct. 1956, p. 499-503.
• Manfred Stürzbecher:  Finkelstein, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 162 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Helga Teucher: Heinrich Finkelstein (1865–1942). Its achievements for the progressive development of health care in the field of pediatrics. Dissertation, Humboldt University Berlin, 1963.
• Manfred Breunung, Wolfgang Kießling: Prof. Dr. med. et phil. Heinrich Finkelstein. A life for the children. In: News sheet of the Association of the Jewish Community of Berlin and of the Association of Jewish Communities in the German Democratic Republic . Dresden, March 1978 (Passover 5747), p. 9 ff.
• Helmut Moll (Papenburg): Heinrich Finkelstein - a posthumous honor. In: Monthly Pediatric Medicine, 1982, No. 130, pp. 859-861.
• Konrad Weiß: Pediatrician and medical teacher. In: Structure . Vol. 61, No. 15 (July 21, 1988), p. 17
• Peter Wunderlich: Heinrich Finkelstein (1865–1942): Pediatrician and pioneer of social paediatrics. A biographical sketch. In: Pediatric Practice. Vol. 58, Issue 11 (November 1990), pp. 587-92.
• Finkelstein, Heinrich , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 296

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