Max Meyerhof

Max Meyerhof

Max Meyerhof (born March 21, 1874 in Hildesheim , † April 19, 1945 in Cairo ) was a German - Egyptian ophthalmologist and medical historian.

Live and act

Max Meyerhof came from a Jewish family who had lived in Hildesheim since 1720 and who had civil rights. His father was the businessman Albert Meyerhof. His mother Lina Spiegelberg came from a family of merchants and bankers. The gynecologist Otto Spiegelberg was a maternal great-uncle, the Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg was a maternal cousin and the biochemist Otto Meyerhof was a paternal cousin. After the father's early death in 1876, his mother had to raise her children alone. In 1878 she moved to Hanover , where Max attended the Goethe Gymnasium .

Max Meyerhof studied medicine in Heidelberg , Berlin and Strasbourg . In Freiburg he did his military service . 1898 doctorate he in Strasbourg Dr. med. He became an assistant, initially at the bacteriological institute in Strasbourg with Ernst Levy (1864-1919) and Josef Forster . During his time in Strasbourg, he also attended lectures from his cousin, Professor of Egyptology Wilhelm Spiegelberg.

In 1898 Max Meyerhof worked for several months as an unpaid assistant in G. Gutmann's eye clinic in Berlin. From 1898 to 1901 he was an assistant in the eye clinic of Augstein and Hecht in Bromberg , the main area of ​​distribution of trachoma in Germany. From 1901 to 1902 he had an unpaid assistant position in Breslau with Wilhelm Uhthoff . In 1902 he opened a practice in Hanover .

In 1900/01 Max Meyerhof traveled to Egypt with his cousin Otto Meyerhof. The impressions he gained caused him to move to Cairo in 1903 and open an ophthalmological practice there. In 1909 the Egyptian Ophthalmological Association elected him its chairman. In 1911 he got the position of director of the eye clinic of the Abbas Hospital in Cairo. In addition to his practice, Max Meyerhof devoted himself to scientific studies in the evenings. He was particularly interested in Arabic medicine and its history. For this he needed a thorough knowledge of the Arabic literary language. He collected Arabic manuscripts and edited them in an exemplary manner.

At the beginning of the First World War , Max Mayerhof was on his annual summer trip in his German homeland and could not return to Cairo. In Hanover he worked in a military hospital. After the war he ran a practice again in Hanover.

With the permission of the British High Commissioner Allenby , he was the first German to return to Egypt after the war in 1922. At the time of the National Socialist persecution of Jews in Germany , he gave up his German citizenship in 1935/36 and became an Egyptian citizen.

Fonts (selection)

• On the morphology of the diphtheria bacillus. Dissertation Strasbourg 1898. Also in: Archive for Hygiene , Munich 1898, 33: 1–34
• with Curt Prüfer : The ophthalmology of Jûḥannā ben Mâsawaih (777–857 AD). In: Islam. Volume 6, 1916, pp. 348-356.
• The Bazaar of Drugs and Fragrances in Cairo. Weimar 1918 (digitized version)
• Experiences from the surgical treatment of trachoma in Egypt. In: Zeitschrift für Augenheilkunde 1920; 43: 129-141
• Kitab al- ° Asr maqalat fi 'l- ° ain. The book of the ten treatises on the eye ascribed to Hunain Ibn Is-Hâq (809–877 AD) the earliest existing systematic textbook of ophthalmology the Arabic text ed. From the only two known ms., With an English transl. and glossary . Government Pr.Cairo 1928
• ʿAlī ibn Rabban at-Tabarī , a Persian doctor of the 9th century AD In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Volume 85 (1931), pp. 38-68 (digitized version )
• Galen. De nominibus medicis. About the medical names, Arabic and German . Verl. D. Akad. D. Knowledge Berlin 1931
• Kitab al Mursid fi 'l-kuhl Al Morchid fi'l-kohhl ou le guide d'oculiste. Ouvrage enédit de l'oculiste arabe-espagnol Mohammad Ibn Qassoûm Ibn Aslam al-Ghâfiqî. Trad. des parties ophtalmologiques d'après le ms. conservé à la bibliothèque de l'Escurial . Laboratoires du Nord de l'Espagne, Masnou (Barcelone) 1933
• L'explication des noms de drogues composé par Maïmonides. Texts publié pour la première fois d'après le manuscrit unique avec traduction commentée et index . Impr. De l'Institut Français, Cairo 1940
• Sultan Saladin's physician on the transmission of Greek medicine to the Arabs . In: Bulletin of the history of Medicien, Volume 18 (1945), pp. 169-178
• Ali al-Bayhaqi's Tatimmat Siwan al-Hikma. A biographical work on learned men of the Islam. In: Osiris, Volume 8 (1948), pp. 122-218
• Together with Joseph Schacht : The Theologus autodidactus of Ibn al-Nafis . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1968 (review)

literature

• Enno Littmann . Max Meyerhof (1874-1945) . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. Volume 99 (1945–1949), pp. 11–14 (digitized version)
• Claudius F. Mayer. Arabism, Egypt and Max Meyerhof. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 19 (1946), pp. 375-432
• Joseph Schacht. Max Meyerhof . In: Osiris, Volume 9 (1950), pp. 7–32 (with a detailed bibliography)