Heinrich Jacob von Recklinghausen

Heinrich Jacob von Recklinghausen (born April 17, 1867 in Würzburg , † December 12, 1942 in Munich ) was a German doctor, blood pressure researcher and philosopher .

Life

His father, Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen , was one of Rudolf Virchow's most important students until 1864 , professor of pathological anatomy in Königsberg, Würzburg and at the University of Strasbourg until his death. The mother, Marie Jacobson, came from East Prussia and was the daughter of the Jewish doctor Jacob Jacobson from Braunsberg . Recklinghausen was the oldest of five siblings.

Recklinghausen led a withdrawn, reclusive life and, apart from the sister's family, had hardly any contacts. In 1930, living environment Recklinghausen darkened appreciably: At Christmas in 1930 died his brother Wilhelm Spiegelberg that Nazism was for the existence of " half-Jewish and more threatening" Family and three nephews (Erwin and Herbert in 1937, Reinhard Spiegelberg 1939) left Germany. After the USA entered the war, correspondence with them became impossible, and the air raids on Munich began. The hopelessness of the catastrophe of World War II that he felt was expressed above all in his poems.

education and profession

He attended the Protestant grammar school in Strasbourg and was the best pupil in his class (school leaving certificate 1885). He then studied medicine in Kiel , Leipzig , Munich , Geneva , Heidelberg , Berlin and Strasbourg. During his first clinical year in Munich, he developed severe neurasthenia and chronic insomnia . This delayed the completion of my studies and a permanent job was no longer an option. From 1890 to 1904 he worked as an assistant doctor at various hospitals, in 1896 in Munich, in 1902 in Bern at Hugo Kronecker's physiological institute and as a ship's doctor, interrupted by lengthy stays in sanatoriums. During the stays in the sanatorium, he began to paint, mainly creating landscapes. Recklinghausen received his doctorate in Strasbourg in 1895.

Until 1910 he lived as a private scholar at his parents' home in Strasbourg and regained his workforce through strict self-discipline. During the First World War , Recklinghausen worked as a hospital doctor in Strasbourg. At the end of the war, because of his German descent, he had to leave Strasbourg in Alsace and went to Heidelberg, where he lived in the household of his sister Elisabeth, who was married to the Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg. In 1924 the family moved to Munich. Recklinghausen followed them and lived with the sister's family until the end of his life.

power

Oscillometric blood pressure monitor according to Recklinghausen

Recklinghausen possessed mathematical-analytical, mechanical-practical and philosophical-artistic talents. In the scientific field, he mainly devoted himself to the physiology of the circulatory system (especially blood pressure research) and limb mechanics. The quintessence of his work as a hospital doctor was the two-volume members Mechanics and paralysis prostheses (1920), which shows the mathematical foundations for the construction of link replacement equipment.

He was one of the most important German blood pressure researchers of the 20th century, not only a doctor and scientist, but also a remarkable poet and philosopher. To this day, his work has remained almost entirely unnoticed or has been wrongly ascribed to his father. Recklinghausen described the theoretical and practical basics of oscillometric blood pressure measurement, an important prerequisite for the development of today's digital-electronic measurement technology.

Blood pressure research

The focus of the physiological work remained the fundamental, theoretical and practical examination of problems of blood pressure measurement . Recklinghausen first discussed the usual measurement methods and the reliability of the criteria used and described a spring tonograph for determining blood pressure (1901, 1906). In addition, he explained in detail and in summary the criteria of the oscillatory blood pressure measurement (1931). Blood pressure monitors were produced according to Recklinghausen's specifications and sold successfully for a long time.

Recklinghausen's main concern was not only the methodical question of the possibility of exact indirect blood pressure determination, but also the adequate assessment of tonographically produced pulse pressure curves. The analysis of the oscillatory pressure curve according to shape and size should provide sufficiently reliable criteria (shape or magno-oscillatory) of the important systolic and diastolic values. With these fundamental problems, Recklinghausen employed since 1901. He called the resulting in gradual change of the compression pressure curve step curve . With decades of mathematical-analytical and practical research on oscillatory blood pressure measurement, he continued to improve this method and is one of the forefathers of the latest generation of oscillatory measuring devices, where microprocessors, among other things, take over the form-oscillatory assessment of transmitted pressure values. The limit points are calculated using special algorithms .

In 1901 Recklinghausen described the first blood pressure measuring device, which in principle corresponded to the device from Scipione Riva-Rocci . A large air pump was used for compression, the rubber sleeve was double-walled and was located within a sheet metal jacket. In order to achieve a complete vascular occlusion on the upper arm, Recklinghausen already used a cuff width of 10 cm ("Recklinghausen cuff").

The "Recklinghausen tonometer" was created in the late 1930s and was manufactured by Bosch & Speidel. It was an oscillation tonometer with an alternating scale (Scala alternans), which, despite its complicated mechanics, reproduced the form-oscillatory-saltatory criterion well. The device had a double bag cuff and only one pointer with a scale.

Because of Recklinghausen's Jewish descent, the distribution of his comprehensive presentation of the blood pressure problem, blood pressure measurement and circulation in the arteries of humans (1940), a classic of German blood pressure literature, was almost banned by Nazi authorities or was subject to an advertising ban.

Cultural studies

Other works dealt with the representation of figures in Egyptian art (figure profiles as an expression of the Egyptian world view), the print reform ( dispute over the Antiqua or Fraktur script ) and the improvement of the electoral law (democratic election and party influence). He corresponded with the sociologist Max Weber and the politician Theodor Heuss . Documents that were left behind disappeared when the Gestapo searched his room .

philosophy

Recklinghausen was also a philosopher. The philosophical legacy (unpublished) consists of thousands of pages of handwritten notes, tables and manuscripts that were written between 1905 and 1942. Recklinghausen's natural philosophy was primarily concerned with the cognitive ability of humans: a philosophy of wholeness with the guiding principle of harmony. He described metaphysically or epistemologically the phenomenology of nature (including atomic physics ) and developed an original philosophical concept of the knowledge of nature: two-media theory (world of things - sham world), metaphysics of the universe (reality - superreality). He cultivated friendships and corresponded with the philosophers Heinrich Rickert , Paul Hensel and Albert Schweitzer . Indian philosophy and the writings of Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead also had an influence .

Fonts

• About blood pressure measurement in humans . In: Archives for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology , 46, 1901, p. 78
• Blood pressure measurement without blood . In: Archives for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology , 55, 1906, p. 375
• What we learn about the great circulation through the pulse pressure curve and through the pulse pressure amplitude . In: Archives for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology , 56, 1906, p. 1
• New apparatus for measuring arterial blood pressure in humans . In: Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift , 60, 1913, p. 817
• Limb mechanics and paralysis prostheses . 2 volumes. Berlin 1920
• A new pump for measuring blood pressure in humans . In: German Archive for Clinical Medicine , 146, 1925, p. 212
• Right profile and left profile in the drawing art of the ancient Egyptians . In: Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprach und Altertumskunde , 63, 1927, p. 14
• Printing reform. Two treatises on the Fraktur-Antiqua question . In: Communications from the Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness ( German Academy ), 2nd issue, 1929
• New ways of measuring blood pressure . Berlin 1931
• Blood pressure measuring cuff with aids for application on the upper arm . In: Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift , p. 79 (1932) 1238
• Blood pressure measurement and circulation in the arteries of humans . Dresden 1940

literature

• Isidor Fischer : Biographical lexicon of the outstanding doctors of the last 50 years . Berlin 1932, Volume 2, p. 1275
• Recklinghauseniana (1-79). Bavarian State Library, Munich, Manuscript Department
• Herbert Spiegelberg (Ed.): Heinrich von Recklinghausen. From the meaning of life and the world . St. Louis 1977

Web links

Wikisource: Heinrich von Recklinghausen  - Sources and full texts

• Estate in the Bavarian State Library