Leopold Müller (doctor)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Karl Leopold Müller (born June 24, 1822 in Mainz ; † October 13, 1893 in Berlin ) was a German doctor who, together with his colleague Theodor Eduard Hoffmann (1837-1894), was a foreign expert ( o-yatoi gaikokujin ) of modern medicine in Japan after the Meiji Restoration .

Bronze bust erected in 1896 in honor of L. Müller (University of Tokyo)

Life

After the fall of the Tokugawa regime in 1868, the new Japanese government vigorously modernized the country. As in many other scientific and technological areas, there were also violent disputes with regard to medicine as to which of the Western training systems to choose from should be taken as a model. At the end of this tug-of-war, in which the Dutch-American missionary Guido Herman Fridolin Verbeck (1830–1898) exerted a great influence as an advisor with his plea for the German model, the government followed the memorandum of Sagara Chian (1836–1906) in 1870 . This had as "Commissioner for medical schools " ( Igakkō torishirabe goyōgakari ) together with his colleague Iwasa Jun (1835-1912) u. a. emphasized that the forms of government are similar, that Prussia has no colonies and that most of the medical frameworks imported via the Dutch East India Company during the Edo period are translations of German publications.

In 1870 the first Japanese physicians were sent to Berlin to study. At the same time, the government asked the Prussian Minister- Resident Maximilian August Scipio von Brandt (1835–1920) for two German doctors for the still young medical school in Tokyo. Von Brandt recommended that the state government in Berlin send military doctors because they were highly regarded in a society dominated by the samurai class and had the prospect of "being drawn into aristocratic circles and perhaps even becoming personal doctors to His Majesty the Tenno ".

In May 1870 the decision was made in favor of Leopold Müller. Müller's father was the Prussian military doctor Johann Benjamin Müller, who had served in Saarlouis since 1833. His son Leopold, who was born in Mainz on June 24, 1824, attended high school here from 1836 to 1842 and then began studying medicine in Bonn. In 1844 he moved to Berlin to the Medical and Surgical Friedrich Wilhelms Institute (" Pépinière "). Studying here was free if you were required to work as a military doctor for eight years. In February 1847 he entered the Royal Charité as a one-year volunteer doctor , where he passed the medical and surgical state examination at the end of May 1849. In 1853 he became a lecturer at the Medical and Surgical Friedrich Wilhelms Academy, and in 1855 senior physician at the Charité. Up to this point there was nothing that distinguished him from the approximately 800 military doctors in Prussia.

From 1856 to 1867 he worked as "Inspecteur général de l'armée et des Hôpitaux militaires" in Haiti , where he achieved considerable prosperity through marriage and various side businesses. However, after the fall of the government of President Fabre Geffrard , he lost his position in the army medical service and, in view of the increasing unrest, decided to leave the country, losing the land. These years of experience in organizing military hospitals were the decisive factors in his selection for the activity in Japan. The payment of 400 gold yen per month, fixed on July 11, 1870, was extraordinarily generous.

However, the Franco-German War prevented the departure to the Far East. Müller believed that the project had thus failed, but on May 23, 1871, he was released by cabinet order for three years without a salary, and on June 3 the order to leave was issued. Müller chose the naval staff doctor Theodor Eduard Hoffmann, whom he had once met at the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelms-Akademie, as his companion. The journey went on the western route to New York, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and from there to Yokohama , where they arrived on August 23, 1871.

Actually, the English doctor William Willis (1837-1894) had already made a great contribution to the hospital and the affiliated new medical school in Tokyo. But when the decision for German medicine was made, he was moved to take over a medical school in far away Kagoshima. In the following year and a half, doctors from France, Denmark and the Netherlands continued to run the business, but things went noticeably downhill again. During their first visit, Müller and Hoffmann were introduced to around 300 students. Their basic knowledge, especially in the field of anatomy and physiology, turned out to be completely inadequate. Since they were directly responsible to the Japanese Ministry of Education and therefore had considerable decision-making powers, Müller proceeded fairly rigorously. After four months, the number of students dropped to 59. Of these, 25 made it to doctorate. Among his students was the well-known doctor and writer Mori gai .

The equipment left a lot to be desired. The lessons took place in the former house of a sovereign ( daimyo ), teaching aids such as skeletons, models, microscopes, etc. had to be obtained step by step. The former farm building served as a hospital. Initially, Müller presented his remarks in class, depending on the interpreter, in German or English and wrote the names etc. on the blackboard. His explanations were translated sentence by sentence, over the years edited on the basis of his materials and later even printed.

In the spring of 1873, the two natural scientists Hermann Cochius and Franz Hilgendorf , as well as the philologist Hermann Funk , arrived to teach German and Latin to develop the scientific basis for modern medical training . After the anatomist Friedrich Karl Wilhelm Dönitz (1838–1912) arrived in July 1873 , who also taught physiology, Müller and Hoffmann were able to devote themselves entirely to clinical instruction.

At that time, the students' language skills were so advanced that they could do without an interpreter in class. The requirements were considerable. In addition to the weekly exams, an exam was held at the end of each year. The eight-year course was crowned with a final exam "which declares the graduate to be qualified for all medical state offices". Müller's aim to build a new hospital according to European standards could not be realized due to financial problems during his time in Japan.

Regardless of the enormous burden, Müller also tried the Japanese language - with modest success. Together with von Brandt, he also founded the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia , of which he was Vice President and, after von Brandt was transferred, President. During his stay in Japan, Müller was promoted to first class medical officer.

Manuscript of Hoffmann's lecture on febrile diseases. Translated into Japanese by Yamazaki Genshū

In August 1874, Müller and Hoffmann's three-year contract expired. The German emperor had already agreed to the 18-month extension requested by the Japanese side, but both doctors were against the subordination of a new Japanese director of the medical school. The negotiations did not lead to an agreement, so that their activity was ended. Until the arrival of their successors Emil August Wilhelm Schultze (1840-1924) and Albrecht Agathon Wernich (1843-1896) in the spring of 1875, however, they continued teaching after they were appointed personal physicians of the Tenno and thus the decisions of the Ministry of Education and of had withdrawn from this appointed director.

In the spring of 1875, both the Ministry of Education and the Meiji- Tenno held festive farewell dinners. There were also generous gifts. On November 25th, Müller and Hoffmann left the country and arrived in Berlin on April 6th, 1876. In the following year Müller was appointed chief physician of the garrison hospital I and the medical director of the house for invalids. He died of a heart condition on October 13, 1893.

The new hospital sought by Müller was built in 1877. In the same year the Japanese government awarded him the first order of Japan created two years earlier, the Order of the Rising Sun (Japanese Kyokujitsushō ). In 1878 the medical school was merged with a few other institutions in the newly established Tokyo Imperial University . A bronze bust erected on the grounds of the Medical Faculty in 1895 still commemorates the historical merits of Müller in building modern medicine in Japan.

Writings by Müller

  • Leopold Müller: De liquido cerebro-spinali. Dissertatio inauguralis physiologica . Berlin, 1847.
  • Leopold Müller: The typhus epidemic of 1868 in the district of Lötzen (government district of Gumbinnen), especially from the etiological and medical police standpoint . Berlin, 1869.
  • Miyake, B. / Müller, Dr .: About the Japanese obstetrics. In: Mittheilungen der Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, Volume I (1873–1876), Issue 5, pp. 21–27.
  • Benjamin KL Müller: Tokyo Igaku, sketches and memories from the time of the spiritual turnaround in Japan, 1871–1876. In: Deutsche Rundschau Volume 57 (1888), pp. 312–329, pp. 441–459.
  • Leopold Muller; Theodor Eduard Hoffmann; Genshu Yamazaki: Ika zensho. kaibō hen (= anatomy). Tōkyō: Shimamura Risuke, Meiji 10-11 (1877-78).

literature

  • Rudolf Hartmann: Japanese students at Berlin University 1870–1914. Berlin, 2003. Kleine Reihe / Mori-Ôgai memorial of the Humboldt University in Berlin. (Digitized version; PDF; 1.12 MB)
  • Ernst Kraas: Surgery: Germans in Japan - Japanese in Germany. In: E. Kraas, Y. Hiki (Ed.): 300 years of German-Japanese relations in medicine. Springer, Tokyo / Berlin / u. a. 1992, pp. 65-70.
  • Christian Scheer: Dr. med. Leopold Müller (1824–1893): Chief of the military medical services of the Republic of Haiti, personal physician to the Emperor of Japan, chief physician of the royal Prussian garrison hospital in Berlin - an unusual biography from the history of the cemetery for invalids. In: Wolfgang Voigt & Kurt Wernicke: City history in the focus of cultural and social history: Festschrift for Laurenz Demps. Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2006, pp. 285-325.
  • Heinz Vianden: German doctors in Japan during the Meiji period. In: Josef Kreiner (Ed.) Germany - Japan Historical contacts. Bonn: Bouvier, 1984, pp. 89-113.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Takahiro Sagara: Saga-han Sagara Chian to doitsu igaku. In: Nihon Ishigaku Zasshi - Journal of the Japan Society of Medical History . Vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 135-138. (Japanese article)
  2. ↑ The first Japanese medical student to be enrolled was Satō Susumu, who had decided in favor of Germany before the government decided and then moved to Berlin with official permission at his own expense. The hospital, run by the family, enjoyed an excellent reputation as a training center for Western medicine as early as the Edo period with its small school attached. After receiving his doctorate in 1874, he took over this Juntendō hospital.
  3. ↑ Müller, 1888, p. 316.
  4. ↑ more about the time in Haiti at Scheer, 2006, pp. 288–300.
  5. ↑ Müller, 1888, p. 441 f.
  6. ↑ Vianden, p. 100.
  7. ↑ Müller, 1888, p. 442 f.
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Benjamin Carl Leopold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military doctor
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1822
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1893
Place of death Berlin