Joseph Dietl

Joseph Dietl, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber (1844)

Joseph Dietl , also Josef Dietl - in Polish Józef Dietl - (born January 24, 1804 in Podbuż , East Galicia , † January 18, 1878 in Krakow ), was an Austrian doctor , pathologist , balneologist , university professor and politician . He was rector of the Jagiellonian University and from 1866 to 1874 mayor of Krakow.

Life

Joseph Dietl's parents were Franciscus Dietl of German descent , a small provincial civil servant in the Austrian Empire , and his wife Anna Kulczycka from impoverished Polish nobility . The grandparents moved from Hungary to Galicia in the 18th century .

Dietl spent his first school years in Sambor . After his parents moved, he went to school in Tarnów and from 1817 in Nowy Sącz . After his father's death (1819) he earned the money for his maintenance and further schooling through tutoring .

Lviv

From 1821 he completed a three-year philosophy course at the University of Lviv . With his outstanding results in the final exam, he was allowed to give lectures . He was able to acquire knowledge of the French and Italian languages and save money for his planned studies in Vienna .

Vienna

In 1823 he began studying medicine at the University of Vienna . His fellow students included Carl Rokitansky and Joseph Skoda , and his teachers Johann Nepomuk von Raimann . Soon penniless again, he became a tutor to a Viennese merchant. 1829 doctorate he became Dr. med. At the first Rigorosum on May 4, 1829, the chairman said:

"This person told us more in five minutes than someone else in two hours."

- NN

Dietl believed that nature heals all diseases, not a doctor. The view corresponded to the New Vienna Medical School and the ideas of thrift in financial management (Austria) . Even before his doctoral thesis was published, Dietl became a demonstrator in the Department of Natural History and Special Natural History ( Mineralogy , Zoology ). He was an intern in the lectures of Johann Andreas Scherer .

From 1829 Dietl ran a private and hospital practice in Vienna. When he had proven himself in cholera epidemics (the first in Europe) in 1830 and 1832 , he was appointed head of Vienna's largest hospital for cholera patients. In addition to this activity, he held lectures in natural history at the university . After unsuccessfully applying to head the faculty at the University of Padua , he turned his back on the academic world. In 1832 he became the police district doctor of Wieden (Vienna) and gained a high reputation as a privately practicing doctor.

While maintaining his position in Wieden, he became an unpaid primary physician for internal medicine at the Wiedner Spital in 1841 . In 1848 he was appointed Primarius of the whole house. After a 19-year hiatus, Dietl began to publish again . His report on the recent epidemic in 1844 became known as the "Manifesto of the (New) Vienna School".

“As long as medicine is an art, it will not be a science. As long as there are successful doctors, there will be no scientific doctors. "

- Joseph Dietl

These ingenious paradoxes formed the core idea of ​​the therapeutic nihilism of the New Vienna School. Erna Lesky sees this as the very own concern of the Viennese, the “gentle law” in therapy .

Krakow

Medical clinic in Krakow

Joseph Dietl in the regalia of the Cracow Rector

university

Dietl followed the call of the Jagiellonian University and took over the management of the local medical clinic on May 12, 1851 as professor for special pathology and therapy ( internal medicine ). The clinic only had 18 beds and was modest but well equipped. Dietl did not persist in therapeutic nihilism. Rather, he developed the physical exam . He was the first to teach percussion and auscultation in Krakow . Plessimeter and stethoscope were soon part of the equipment of every doctor. Dietl brought the clinic to high esteem and enlarged it by six beds. At Dietl's suggestion, medical textbooks were translated into Polish and printed in the university print shop. They became affordable for the students. Adored by them, Dietl became the most important professor of the faculty and the Jagiellonian University. He took the partial professorship for pathology in 1852. For an unusually long time, from 1856 to 1861, he was dean of the medical faculty. He introduced the title and function of assistant professor (the "lecturer"). After his rectorate (1861/62) the university management wanted to extend Dietl's term of office; however, the Ministry of Culture in Vienna rejected this request. Franz Joseph I ordered Dietl's early release on June 14, 1865 without giving any reason . In the founding year of the Kraków Academy in 1872, Dietl became director of its mathematics and science class.

Dietl wrote 138 publications and books and founded the periodical Przegląd Lekarski (Journal for Doctors ).

politics

Dietl advocated Polish nationalism and the reform of the education and training system. As a parliamentarian , he advocated abolishing German as the language of instruction, building more schools and ensuring teachers a better livelihood. He was aware of the social importance of women and was committed to a sensible upbringing and a comprehensive education for girls and young women. He promoted the opening of a girls' high school in Krakow and the participation of farmers in politics. When Galicia gained autonomy in 1866 , the Cracow city ​​council elected the landowner Dietl as mayor. He wanted to give the old capital, the former seat of the Polish kings, the status it deserves.

“Our illustrious past is over, our present is depressing; but the future belongs to us if we use it, if we work hard for it, with understanding and perseverance. "

- Joseph Dietl

In his eight years in office, Dietl put the hygiene, structural infrastructure , fire protection , urban finances and the school system in order in the run-down city. He promoted the development of green spaces, restructured the city council and improved the business conditions of the merchants.

From 1861 he was a member of the Galician state parliament and demanded full autonomy for Galicia.

In 1869 Dietl organized the First Congress of Naturalists and Doctors in Cracow. In the same year he gave Franz Joseph a brilliant reception; for the city was deeply grateful to the emperor for restoring the Polish language to schools and public services. The emperor honored the gesture by summoning Dietl to the manor house (Austria) for life . In 1866 Dietl became President of the Krakow Senate. When the government of Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart wavered in 1871 , Dietl campaigned in the manor house for the preservation of federalism in the Habsburg monarchy . Envy and enemies were not absent from the Kraków city council . As they hindered his work more and more, Dietl resigned as mayor in June 1874. He also resigned and gave up all public activities.

retirement

Dietl had only married in the fifth decade. His wife, a young and attractive Viennese woman from a poor family, spoke no Polish. She did not "get on" well with her husband and did not feel comfortable in Krakow. After a couple of years of marriage without children, she moved back to Vienna. In the last years of his life, Dietl increasingly suffered from shortness of breath and rheumatic complaints. Occasionally he visited his home village Rzuchowa near Tarnów. There, the nephew Leopold Dietl managed the estate that Dietl had built himself. When he died shortly before his 74th birthday, the funeral procession turned into a patriotic event. The city of Krakow paid for his magnificent burial . One of Krakow's boulevards is named after Dietl. The Ulica Józefa Dietla was built between 1878 and 1880 in place of the Old Vistula . Dietl had been very committed to filling them up; but it was only realized after his time as mayor.

Medical historical significance

With government support, Dietl traveled to many countries in Europe and overseas from 1846 to familiarize himself with the organization and treatment methods of hospitals. Between 1850 and 1853 he reported in detail about his perceptions in the journal of the Imperial and Royal Society of Doctors in Vienna . His Critical Representation of European Hospitals (1853) was the first noteworthy German publication on hospital hygiene .

In a work published in 1849 Dietl (successfully) turned against the therapy of bloodletting in pneumonia . It caused a sensation and was translated into Polish in 1852 . As a university lecturer , he was committed to the introduction of the Polish language as a university language alongside the German language . He succeeded in eliminating the centuries-old and deeply rooted superstition in the Vistula plait. For the Poles , this success was "of inestimable value", for medical history no less important than the advocacy against bloodletting in pneumonia patients.

Dietl's studies on medicinal baths in Silesia and Galicia are important from a scientific and social point of view . They stimulated balneotherapy and climatic therapy . Between 1854 and 1858 Dietl visited almost all European spas and reported on the spring waters of Galicia, Silesia, Bohemia and Salzburg . By publishing many articles on spas in Polish and German from 1855 onwards, he brought the dilapidated spas in Lesser Poland back to life. Krynica-Zdrój , Szczawina , Iwonicz-Zdrój and Rabka-Zdrój became balneological centers in the country.

In the urology Dietl was his work on the floating kidney known.

medal

Dietl's monument in Krakow

• Franz Joseph Order (as professor)
• Order of the Iron Crown (as mayor)
• Order of Gregory (by Pius IX for the reception of the nuncio in Krakow)

Works

• Anatomical Clinic of Brain Diseases . Vienna 1846. GoogleBooks
• Anatomical Clinic of Brain Diseases, as a supplement to the article on head diseases published in the journal of the KK Gesellschaft der Aerzte in Vienna . Vienna 1849. GoogleBooks
• The bloodletting in pneumonia, discussed clinically and physiologically . Vienna 1849. GoogleBooks
• Critical representation of European hospitals, based on our own travel observations . Vienna 1853. GoogleBooks

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Th. Zajaczkowski (2006)
2. ↑ Dissertation: A few words about the reliability of medical science for special attention for non-doctors
3. ^ Karl Heinz Tragl: Chronicle of the Vienna hospitals . Böhlau 2007
4. ↑ J. Dietl: Observations on typhus after the results of the four-year epidemic in the Vienna police district Wieden (1843)
5. ↑ J. Dietl: Practical perceptions based on the results of the previous year's epidemic in the Vienna police district Wieden (1845)
6. ↑ J. Stahnke: Ludwik Teichmann (1823–1895). Anatomist in Krakow. In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 205–267; here: p. 211.
7. ↑ J. Stahnke (1984), p. 211, note 19.
8. ↑ J. Dietl: Balneological travel sketches
9. ^ J. Dietl: Galizische Badereisen . Vienna Medical Weekly
10. ↑ J. Dietl: Wandering kidneys and their entrapment . Vienna Medical Weekly (1864)

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Dietl, Joseph . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 11th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1864, pp. 393–395 ( digitized version ).
• Jozef Dietl . Krakow 1928.
• Eugeniusz Kucharz: The life and achievements of Joseph Dietl. In: Clio Medica 16, 1981, pp. 25-35.
• Karl Sablik: Joseph Dietl's years in Vienna (1824–1851). In: Wolfgang Kessler, Henryk Rietz, Gert Robel (eds.) Cultural relations in Central and Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Festschrift for Heinz Ischreyt on his 65th birthday. Berlin 1982 (= Studies on the History of Cultural Relations in Central and Eastern Europe , IX), pp. 41–50.
• W. Szumowski: Joseph Dietl and the language of instruction at the University of Krakow , in: Festschrift for Max Neuburger . Maudrich-Fachverlag . Vienna 1948.
• Claudia Wiesemann: Josef Dietl and therapeutic nihilism. On the historical and political background of a medical thesis . Peter Lang AG 1991. GoogleBooks
• Thaddäus Zajaczkowski : Joseph Dietl (1804-1878). Medical reformer and his contribution to urology . Der Urologe 1 (2006), pp. 85-94.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Dietl  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Joseph Dietl in the catalog of the German National Library
• Thaddäus Zajaczkowski: Joseph Dietl (The Urologist)