Louis Appia

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Louis Appia

Louis Paul Amédée Appia (born October 13, 1818 in Hanau , † March 1, 1898 in Geneva ) was a Swiss surgeon . He made particular merits in military medicine. In 1863 he became a member of the “Committee of Five” in Geneva, which later became the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In 1869 he met Clara Barton in Switzerland and made her aware of the Geneva Convention and the work of the International Committee. For Clara Barton, this encounter was the impetus for her commitment to founding the American Red Cross .

Life

Studied and worked as a field surgeon

Louis Appia was born on October 13, 1818 in Hanau. His parents Paul Joseph Appia (1782–1849) and his wife Caroline Develey (1786–1867) originally came from Piedmont . His father, who had studied in Geneva , was pastor at the Walloon-Dutch Church in Hanau from 1811 . Louis was the third of six children. He was baptized in the name of Louis Paul Amédée Appia. He attended grammar school in Frankfurt and obtained his university entrance qualification in Geneva at the age of 18. In 1838 he began studying medicine in Heidelberg and graduated in 1843 with a doctorate . Then he returned to Frankfurt.

In 1847 he traveled to Switzerland to look after his grandparents in Geneva during the Sonderbund War and the tense situation that preceded it. From Geneva he continued on to Paris. There and in Frankfurt a year later he helped to care for the wounded in the clashes of the February Revolution in France and the March Revolution in Germany. As he was fascinated by military customs and traditions as well as medicine, his special interest was from then on to military medicine and improving the care of war victims. After the death of his father, he came to Geneva with his mother in 1849 and practiced as a surgeon there. As part of his further occupation with military medical issues, he developed, among other things, a device for immobilizing a broken arm or leg while transporting a wounded man. In addition, he wrote a treatise on the surgical treatment of war injuries. In 1853 he married Anna Caroline Lassere (1834–1886) and had two sons and two daughters with her. His son Adolphe Appia later became known as an architect and set designer.

His brother George (born 1815), who was active as a pastor in Pinerolo , made him aware of the situation of the victims of the Sardinian War in several letters in 1859 . From July of the same year, Louis Appia worked in field hospitals in Turin , Milan , Brescia and Desenzano del Garda . He distributed copies of his treatise to Italian and French doctors, organized the necessary material and, in particular in letters to his Geneva friends, solicited donations to help the wounded. His invention was successfully tested for the first time during a long transport of a wounded lieutenant at the St. Philip Hospital in Milan.

At the beginning of August he returned to Geneva. Here he completed and supplemented his treatise with the support of his friend Théodore Maunoir and published it in the same year as a book entitled Le chirurgien à l'ambulance ou quelques études pratiquées sur les plaies par armes à feu (“The field surgeon or some practical studies about gunshot wounds ”). For his medical achievements, he was just like in January 1860 Henry Dunant of Victor Emmanuel II. , King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy , the Order of St. Maurice and Lazarus awarded later, the second highest award of the Kingdom of Italy . In November of the same year he became a citizen of Geneva and one year later became chairman of the Geneva Medical Society.

Commitment to the ICRC

Memorial stone at the history center Dybbøl Banke at the Düppeler Schanzen in memory of Louis Appia and Charles van de Velde

In 1863 he was asked in the "Committee of Five" to examine Henry Dunant's ideas for the establishment of voluntary aid societies for war casualties and to help put them into practice. He was one of the five founding members of the International Committee of Aid Societies for the Care of the Wound, founded in the same year and renamed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1876. This also included the lawyer Gustave Moynier , the General Guillaume-Henri Dufour and the doctor Théodore Maunoir . At the international conference in Geneva in October 1863, Appia and the Prussian delegate Gottfried Friedrich Franz Loeffler suggested that all volunteers on the battlefields should wear white armbands as identification. General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, like Appia a founding member of the committee, later added a red cross on the armband to this proposal. The red cross on a white background, the inversion of the Swiss flag , became the symbol of the committee.

During the German-Danish War , when the Düppeler Schanzen were stormed on April 18, 1864, Appia and the Dutch captain Charles van de Velde were the first delegates in history to act as neutral observers during a battle with such armbands as neutral observers monitored. They had been selected for this purpose by the International Committee, which was the first to take advantage of its options based on the resolutions of the International Conference in Geneva from October 26 to 29, 1863. In addition, Appia and van de Velde received a mandate from the Geneva Red Cross Association, which was only founded at short notice on March 17, 1864. As the forerunner of the Swiss Red Cross, which was founded a few years later, it assumed the role of a national aid society. Due to the additional authorization by the national society of a neutral country, it was possible for both delegates to provide and organize humanitarian aid for the respective conflicting party in addition to the legitimate tasks of observation and reporting for delegates of the International Committee. While Appia was on the Prussian side, Van de Velde was sent to the Danish troops. Appia later reported on his use among other things:

“… When I wanted to tell him [the Prussian commandant] about my assignment, he interrupted me immediately. 'The mark you wear is a sufficient recommendation, we know what it means. You are here for the public good, here you have a requisition certificate, choose from the fleet of cars what suits you. ' ... "

Two years later, in June 1866, at the request of his brother, he was again involved in the Italian Wars of Liberation. Together with two other volunteers, they called themselves Squadriglia dei Soccoriti voluntari delle Valli ("Corps of Volunteers from the Valleys") and looked after the wounded in a makeshift hospital in Storo , a small town in Italy. In 1867, after Henry Dunant's departure from the International Committee, he became its secretary and held this office until 1870. Due to the extensive activity of President Gustave Moynier, however , this position meant neither burden nor influence to any significant extent for him. The committee has met at his home about three to four times a month since then. In August 1869 he met Clara Barton, who at that time was in Switzerland for a long spa stay. Impressed by her efforts during the American Civil War, he asked her why the United States had so far refused to sign the Geneva Convention. For Clara Barton, who had not yet heard of Henry Dunant's ideas, this was the impetus to actively campaign for the establishment of a national Red Cross Society and the USA's accession to the Geneva Convention after her return to the USA in 1873.

During the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871 Appia was again a delegate of the International Committee. In October 1872 he helped found the first non-European national Red Cross Society in Egypt . He also supported Clara Barton's idea to extend the Red Cross Society's mission beyond helping those injured in the war to include victims of natural disasters and epidemics. In the following years he continued to work as a surgeon and continued his studies in the treatment of war injuries. He also learned languages ​​such as Japanese and Chinese in the later years of his life in order to be able to better help build the national societies that were emerging in these countries. In addition to his continuing strong commitment to spreading the Geneva Convention, he also dealt with considerations on civil liberties and social justice.

Death and remembrance

Street and bus stop in Geneva
Red Cross armband by Louis Appia

Louis Appia remained an active member of the ICRC in the last years of his life. So he took part in the Red Cross conferences until 1892. His work was characterized by many trips to congresses and conferences, where he promoted the Geneva Convention and the work of the International Committee. In his later years he also advocated that the national Red Cross societies should be active in peacetime not only to help with natural disasters and epidemics but also to take care of refugees .

It is said that he spent most of the last weeks of his life in his apartment, showing visitors his Red Cross armband from 1864. He died in the same year as Charles van de Velde, his companion in the German-Danish war. In the almost 80 years of his life he was a member of the International Committee for 35 years. Of the founding members remaining after Dunant's expulsion, only Gustave Moynier survived him.

The Avenue Appia in Geneva and the Dr.-Appia-Straße in Hanau and, since 2014, a Louis-Appia-Passage in Frankfurt am Main bear his name today. A memorial stone erected in 1989 at the Düppeler Schanzen commemorates the work of Louis Appia and Charles van de Velde. The Red Cross armband worn by Appia there is now an exhibit in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.

Works (selection)

  • The surgery at l'ambulance or quelques études pratiques sur les plaies par arms à feu. Suivi de lettres à un collègue sur les blessés de Palestro, Magenta, Marignan et Solférino. Paris 1859
  • Les Blessés dans le Schleswig pendant la guerre de 1864: rapport présenté au comité international de Genève. Geneva 1864 (German: The wounded of Schleswig in the war of 1864. Munich 2018)
  • La guerre et la charité. Traité théoritique et pratique de philanthropie appliquée aux armées en campagne. Geneva 1867 (together with Gustave Moynier)
  • La solidarité dans le mal et la justice divine. Paris 1890

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Erhard Bus: From the “Hanau district association for the care of wounded and sick warriors in the field” to the “German Red Cross District Association Hanau eV” In: New magazine for Hanau history. Published by the Hanau History Association in 1844 . Vol. 118 (2011), pp. 117-136.
  2. ↑ Although Louis Appia and Henry Dunant stayed in close proximity to each other in the war zone in northern Italy for a short time in 1859 and devoted themselves to helping the wounded, there are no indications in their notes or other memories that they met each other at that time or otherwise had knowledge of each other's work. Even if such an encounter cannot be completely ruled out, it seems unlikely in view of this.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 21, 2006 .
personal data
SURNAME Appia, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Appia, Louis Paul Amédée (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and co-founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1898
Place of death Geneva