Paul Pulewka

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Paul Pulewka (born February 11, 1896 in Elbing , † October 22, 1989 in Tübingen ) was a German pharmacologist and toxicologist . He has made a significant contribution to the establishment of pharmacological research and teaching and state drug monitoring in Turkey, which was opening up to natural sciences and medical science under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk .

Life

His father was a pharmacist. After graduating from the humanistic grammar school in Elbing in 1914, Pulewka took part in the First World War as an infantryman and later as a medical sergeant . He then studied medicine at the University of Munich and the University of Königsberg . In 1923 he received a doctoral thesis from the Pharmacological Institute in Königsberg under Hermann Wieland (1885–1929). med. PhD. Wieland moved to Heidelberg in 1925, and Felix Haffner (1886–1953) was his successor in Königsberg. Under him , Pulewka completed his habilitation in pharmacology and toxicology in 1927. In the same year Haffner accepted an appointment at the University of Tübingen . Until Haffner's successor Fritz Eichholtz (1889–1967) took up his post in 1928, Pulewka was acting head of the Königsberg Institute, and then went to Tübingen at Haffner's invitation. He received a teaching position for the toxicology of gases and dusts, warfare agents and industrial poisons. In 1933 he was appointed adjunct professor. He was married to the non-Aryan pediatrician Käte Fürst and was considered "politically unreliable". He himself reports: "In the lecture I announced that, according to a statement by the Nazi party, German people would only be cured by German medicinal plants and that synthetic medicines had been invented by Jews to poison German people." Behrend Behrens (1895– 1895–) 1969), who had been his co-assistant in Königsberg, whom he and his wife had saved from drowning in the Baltic Sea and who had meanwhile worked in the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Public Education , warned him. He refused to divorce his wife and emigrated with his family to Turkey in October 1935.

The Ankara University was in the making. Pulewka was given rooms in the Central Hygiene Institute of the Ministry of Health, which was later named after the first Turkish Minister of Health Refik Saydam , the Refik Saydam Institute. He was supposed to manufacture insulin with inadequate resources , but soon found a more realistic task in drug testing. This “included, to name examples, the then common pharmacological evaluation of hormone, vitamin, digitalis and salvarsan preparations , ergot extracts , remedies that - desired or undesired - had an effect on the autonomic nervous system . [...] It turned out that an unexpectedly large number of medicinal products did not comply with the manufacturer's declaration. ”There were also toxicological analyzes such as the clarification of food poisoning by weeds in cereals. Because there was a lack of sugar, "hundreds of samples of rhododendron honey were sent in every year," the mad honey with toxins from rhododendron species in the Turkish Black Sea region .

There were tensions both with the Turkish colleagues and authorities and between the numerous German emigrants. The employment contracts had to be renewed annually. "Above all, the occupation of higher positions by foreigners, which blocked the local offspring from advancing, aroused hostility towards foreigners." After Ataturk's death in 1938, the difficulties increased. In 1940 Pulewka's contract was not renewed, but in 1941, when Refik Saydam became Prime Minister, he was reinstated. In 1946, the Ankara Medical Faculty was established, and Pulewka was appointed director of the University's Pharmacological Institute in addition to being the director of the Refik Saydam Institute. In addition, he was appointed head of the Institute for Materia Medica , where medical students were instructed in the preparation of dosage forms . He gave his lectures in German with a lecturer as simultaneous translator.

The nineteen years in Turkey ended inharmoniously. In 1951 a textbook on pharmacology was published by Pulewka, which was then translated into Turkish, according to Pulewka “Prelude to the discharge, since it could be used as a basis for teaching by the Turkish successor.” The Minister of Education appeared at the Refik Saydam Institute with the instruction, to give up research and limit oneself to teaching. After Pulewka had refused to accept Turkish citizenship in 1953, the dean of the medical faculty informed him in a politely cool letter of 16 lines that he would be dismissed at the end of the year. He was allowed to continue to use the title of Associate Professor .

With the support of the German ambassador Wilhelm Haas , Pulewka returned to Germany. He received a visiting professorship in Tübingen in 1954 and a full professorship for toxicology in 1957 . In 1961 he became director of the newly founded Tübingen Institute for Toxicology , the first in the Federal Republic, like the Pharmacological Institute, to be housed in the Lothar Meyer building on Wilhelmstrasse in Tübingen. In 1964 he retired . His successor was Herbert Remmer .

research

In Koenigsberg Pulewka wanted to understand a reaction of mice to morphine discovered by Walther Straub , the so-called mouse tail phenomenon . He interpreted it as an expression of a general excitatory effect of morphine on these animals, which was confirmed by an increase in breathing. Pulewka also investigated the keratolytic effect of sulfur in Königsberg . It is based on a specific effect of the sulfide anion S 2− on the horny substance of the skin.

During his first time in Tübingen, Pulewka used the size of the pupil of mice for the quantitative determination of substances that dilate pupils such as atropine . The sender address of the first publication, 1932, was still the Pharmacological Institute Tübingen, the sender address of the second publication, 1936, was the "Pharmacological Section of the Central Hygiene Institute Ankara".

From Turkey Pulewka reported on the toxicity of an impurity found in flour Süßgrases tumbling ryegrass . When the inhabitants of a village became ill after eating bread - dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, impaired vision, clouding of consciousness with hallucinations - he diagnosed the cause, among other things by means of the pupil size of mice: an admixture of thorn apple seeds to the grain. He determined the content of central nervous substances in Turkish hemp plants . “From the end of August to the beginning of September 1937, the customs authorities sent us 520 separate samples of dried hemp plant parts through the Ministry of Health, specifying the places of production.” The salary fluctuated greatly.

Back in Tubingen, compared Pulewka 1959, the effect of the present in the Toll honey Andromedotoxins with the effect of aconitine and Veratrine .

recognition

Pulewka is now recognized as a co-founder of pharmacology and drug surveillance in Turkey. In 1996 the Turkish Pharmacological Society stated “that the founders of pharmacology in Turkey were Professor Dr. Akil Muhtar Özden , Istanbul University , and Professor Dr. Paul Pulewka, Ankara University. ”Akil Muhtar Özden lived from 1877 to 1949.

literature

  • Karl Walther Bock, Michael Schwarz: Institute for Toxicology, Medical Faculty of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (1961–2002). In: Athineos Philippu (Ed.): History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries, pp. 610–613. Berenkamp-Verlag, Innsbruck 2004. ISBN 3-85093-180-3 .
  • Arın Namal, Arnold Reisman: Paul Pulewka founder of Turkey's pharmacology while in exile from the nazis: 1935–1955. In: Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine (ISHIM) , October 2006, pp. 21–29, online at ishim.net (PDF, English; 2.1 MB)
  • Arnold Reisman: Turkey's Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Ataturk's Vision . New Academia Publishing, Washington, DC, 2006, pp. 204-206 online at books.google.com
  • Jürgen Lindner, Heinz Lüllmann: Pharmacological institutes and biographies of their directors. Editio Cantor, Aulendorf 1996, ISBN 3-87193-172-1 .
  • K.öffelholz, U. Trendelenburg: Persecuted German-speaking pharmacologists 1933–1945, p. 124. 2nd edition. Dr. Schrör Verlag, Frechen 2008. ISBN 3-9806004-8-3 .
  • P. Pulewka: Doctor and researcher for 56 years . In: Therapy of the Present . 119, 1980, pp. 216-228.
  • P. Pulewka: Nineteen years as a pharmacologist in Turkey . In: Therapy of the Present . 119, 1980, pp. 199-211.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pulewka 1980, p. 218.
  2. ↑ Pulewka 1980, pp. 202-203.
  3. ↑ Pulewka 1980, p. 204.
  4. ↑ Pulewka 1980, p. 208.
  5. ↑ Pulewka 1980, p. 210.
  6. ↑ Namal, Reisman 2006, p. 26.
  7. ↑ Paul Pulewka: The effect of morphine on the white mouse . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 123, 1927, pp. 259-271. doi : 10.1007 / BF01865346 .
  8. ^ Paul Pulewka: Further studies on keratolysis . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 140, 1929, pp. 181-193. doi : 10.1007 / BF01994812 .
  9. ↑ Paul Pulewka: The eye of the white mouse as a pharmacological test object. I. Communication: A method for the quantitative determination of the smallest amounts of atropine and other mydriatics . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 168, 1932, pp. 307-318. doi : 10.1007 / BF01861298 .
  10. ↑ P. Pulewka: About the determination of the value of medicines. (At the same time II. Communication about the eye of the white mouse as a test object.) . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 180, 1936, pp. 119-134. doi : 10.1007 / BF01858816 .
  11. ↑ P. Pulewka: Studies on Lolium temulentum in wheat flour . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 208, 1949, pp. 176-177. doi : 10.1007 / BF00244678 .
  12. ↑ Paul Pulewka: The elucidation of an unusual mass poisoning caused by Datura stramonium in bread flour . In: Clinical weekly . 27, 1949, pp. 672-674. doi : 10.1007 / BF01480561 .
  13. ↑ Paul Pulewka: About the relative effectiveness of Turkish hemp plants . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 211, 1950, pp. 278-286. doi : 10.1007 / BF00245317 .
  14. ↑ P. Pulewka, M. Bühler: Experiments on the quantitative comparison of the effect of andromedotoxin with the effect of the alkaloids aconitine and veratrine . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 236, 1959, pp. 262-263. doi : 10.1007 / BF00259160 .
  15. ↑ Namal, Reisman 2006, p. 28.
personal data
SURNAME Pulewka, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Elblag
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1989
Place of death Tübingen