Josef Head

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Josef Leiter (born March 2, 1830 in Vienna ; † March 21, 1892 ) was a Viennese manufacturer of surgical instruments and apparatus.

Life

The second eldest of four sons of a poor master military shoemaker only attended the first three classes of elementary school and then completed a four-year apprenticeship as a surgical instrument maker. His wanderings took him through southern Germany to Belgium, England and France, where he found valuable experience, especially in Paris, with the world-famous manufacturers Georges-Guillaume-Amatus Lüer and Joseph-Frédéric-Benoît Charrière . He was very interested in electricity and the construction of batteries, which he later built into many of his models.

Back in Vienna he works in various companies and continues his electrical experiments. In 1855 he rented a small workshop opposite the outpatient clinic at Mariannengasse 11 and founded his own company with two assistants. Theodor Billroth was one of his good customers, as was the American urologist Henry Jacob Bigelow , and his business grew into an internationally recognized company. In 1866 he had his factory built.

In 1879 he was to take an important step for the development of endoscopy. In Dresden, the doctor Maximilian Nitze had developed a cystoscope with a platinum filament at the distal end, which, however, was technically not yet fully developed. Thanks to Leiters decisive design improvements, there was a world premiere in Vienna: The cystoscope with illumination by means of platinum filament was successfully demonstrated on living patients in November 1879 in the company of doctors . Seven years later he presented the first incandescent cystoscope in Vienna.

Web links

References

  1. ↑ http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/henry-bigelow.html
personal data
SURNAME Head, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian manufacturer of surgical instruments
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1892