Peter Dettweiler (doctor)
Peter Dettweiler (born August 4, 1837 in Wintersheim ; † January 12, 1904 in Kronberg im Taunus ) was a German pulmonologist .
Life
Dettweiler began his medical studies in 1856 and studied in Giessen , Würzburg and Berlin . In Giessen he was a member of the Corps Teutonia . After taking part in the German-Danish War as a volunteer doctor in 1864, he practiced in Pfeddersheim (now part of Worms ) from 1864 to 1866 . During the Prussian-German War in 1866 he was a volunteer doctor, later a military doctor in Darmstadt.
Assistant doctor at the Görbersdorf Sanatorium
Due to a hemorrhage, Peter Dettweiler, who had been suffering from a lung disease since his student days, went to the sanatorium in Görbersdorf / Silesia in 1868 , which was run by the doctor Hermann Brehmer . After his recovery, Dettweiler accepted Brehmer's offer in 1869 and stayed in Görbersdorf as his assistant doctor. It was there that the young doctor got to know Brehmer's groundbreaking measures in the treatment of consumption. The views of the founder of the pulmonary sanatorium system were controversial. There was a break between Brehmer and his student. Dettweiler left Görbersdorf in 1876 and was followed by the Polish doctor Alfred (von) Sokolowski (1849-1924) as an assistant, after whom Görbersdorf was renamed Sokolowsko in 1947.
The Falkenstein Sanatorium
Frankfurt doctors who dealt with the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis , which was widespread at the time , opened the Falkenstein pulmonary hospital in the Taunus in 1875. After the senior physician Dr. Dürssen himself died of tuberculosis in 1876, the management was transferred to Peter Dettweiler in April of the same year.
The sanatorium, located at a height of 400 m on the southern slope of the Taunus, consisted of a main building, two side wings and two side houses. On the ground floor of the main wing there were splendid social rooms, the library, the administration office and the post office and telegraph office. The patient rooms with a total of 115 beds were established on the remaining three floors. The doctor's and waiting room as well as the laboratories for microscopic and chemical examinations were located on the first floor. With the Falkensteiner Heilanstalt, in addition to the pulmonary hospital that was opened in Görbersdorf on March 15, 1875, Dr. Theodor Römpler (1845–1902) again Brehmer's idea of sanatorium treatment, especially for tuberculosis sufferers. With Dettweiler, they were able to win not only a competent, but above all an extremely committed doctor.
Under Dettweiler's direction, the Falkensteiner pulmonary sanatorium quickly achieved significant international fame. Doctors from Davos in Switzerland and France found out about the effectiveness of Dettweiler's tuberculosis therapy in Falkenstein.
The tuberculosis therapy
Dettweiler's tuberculosis therapy was largely based on Brehmer's tried and tested hygienic-dietary treatment principles, which were based on a rich, high-fat diet. The number of meals, the amount of food and the times were precisely prescribed. His strict discipline in the "Zuchtanstalt" was famous and notorious, but was accepted without complaint by the patients, who mainly belonged to the affluent social class. In the beginning, the therapy also included the consumption of alcohol. Cognac, wine and champagne were “prescribed” to the patients. Later Dettweiler restricted this "treatment with alcohol" again.
Menu in Falkenstein from 1903:
- 7.30 a.m. - 8.30 a.m .: First breakfast
- Coffee, tea, chocolate or cocoa, milk, bread, baked goods, butter and honey.
- 10.00 a.m .: Second breakfast
- Milk or concentrated soup and bread and butter
- 1 p.m .: lunch
- 5 - 6 courses followed by coffee
- 4 p.m .: milk
- 7pm - 8pm: dinner
- Soup, hot and cold platter with lettuce and compote
- 9 p.m .: milk
In addition, there was an extended rest cure.
The aerial therapy
The open-air cures were carried out in open halls in all weathers and in all seasons. Dettweiler developed a particularly comfortable deck chair to make it as comfortable as possible for the patient to remain on their back for a long time. The patients had to spend six to ten hours a day outside, wrapped in thick blankets. The air lying cure and the sanatorium movement remain an astonishing, in their extent inexplicable phenomenon. The rest cure is probably the most impressive example of successful psychosomatic treatment of an organic disease. Until the introduction of effective drugs after World War II, it remained the most important measure of treatment for tuberculosis.
The "Davos Lounger"
The centerpiece of the outdoor reclining cure was the so-called "Davos deck chair" designed by Peter Dettweiler. These special deck chairs were used on the open balconies and terraces of the sanatoriums in all weathers and in all seasons. The mattress, optimally adapted to the body, the fur sack, the wool blanket and a warm bed bottle made the reclining cure possible even on the coldest winter days. Karl Turban was the first to use the deck chair for his sanatorium in Davos. Soon the chair was present in all Swiss sanatoriums. Therefore the name.
Thomas Mann dedicates hymns of praise to the Davos lounger: "The well-being of resting limbs could not be provided more humanely than with this excellent lounger."
Excerpts from the novel from the Zauberberg : “... and with that he went over to where a deck chair and table were also set up, got Ocean Steamships and his beautiful, soft, dark red and green plaid from the tidy room and sat down. (...) he did not remember that such a comfortable deck chair had ever seemed to him. The frame, a little old-fashioned in shape - which was just a play on taste, because the chair was obviously new - consisted of reddish brown polished wood and a mattress with a soft, calico-like cover, actually composed of three high cushions, reached from the foot end to over up the backrest. In addition, by means of a cord, a neck roll that was neither firm nor too flexible, with an embroidered linen cover, was attached to it, which was particularly beneficial ... "
“One was lying very unusually comfortably, Hans Castorp noticed immediately with pleasure. - He did not remember that such a comfortable deck chair had ever seemed to him ... He first threw the camel hair blanket over himself from the left lengthways to under the armpit, then from below over the feet and then from the right, so that he finally got a perfect formed an even and smooth package from which only the head, shoulders and arms could be seen. "
Heini Dalcher, a committed architect from Sissach, had the lounger reissued in larger numbers in 2011 in a wickerwork shop in Vietnam. History-conscious sanatoriums in Switzerland were able to equip themselves with the replicas.
The "Blue Heinrich" - Privy Councilor Dettweiler's pocket bottle for those who cough
Dettweiler set new hygienic standards with the pocket spit bottle, which became known as the Blauer Heinrich .
It was important to Dettweiler to educate the patients about the high risk of infection of the disease and the correct handling of infectious material. Research had shown that pulmonary tuberculosis was spread not only through the air but also through contaminated dust. So that the sick no longer spit on the floor or in the handkerchief, Peter Dettweiler developed his pocket spit bottle "Blauer Heinrich".
In 1889, only a few years after the first description of the tuberculosis bacilli, he presented the "pocket bottle for coughing people" he had developed at the 8th Congress for Internal Medicine in Wiesbaden. It was made by Noelle & Co. in Lüdenscheid, which sold it for 1 Mark 50.
Dettweiler regarded it as a "sacred duty [...] to make every coughing [...] use this simple, cheap device" a requirement.
A silver funnel for collecting the sputum is hidden under the hinged lid . The base can be unscrewed so that the bottle can be easily rinsed and cleaned with water or a disinfectant solution. The transparent wall allowed the level of filling to be checked visually, while the unsightly contents were concealed from view of third parties by the strong coloring of the cobalt glass.
The sputum bottle achieved literary fame through Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. On the drive from the train station to the Berghof Sanatorium, where Hans Castorp visits his sick cousin Joachim, he can already take a look at the “flat, curly bottle made of blue glass with a metal cap”. Joachim slips it straight back into his coat pocket, with the words: “Most of us have that up here. [...]. It also has a name with us, such a nickname, very jolly. "Later, Hans Castorp learns this name from the mouth of the uneducated Ms. Stöhr:" Without overcoming, "says Thomas Mann," with a stubbornly ignorant expression, she brought the grumpy one Description "Der Blaue Heinrich" on the lips. "
The first "people's sanatorium for poor people with lung disease"
The large number of tuberculosis sufferers contrasted with a relatively small number of sanatoriums. And the few existing sanatoriums were reserved for the upper classes, because only these could afford the costly treatment, which sometimes lasted 12 weeks. Dettweiler's great social work is the founding of the first German “people's sanctuary for poor people with lung disease”, which he initiated in 1892. It was on the way from Falkenstein to Königstein and in 1895 moved to Ruppertshain.
The largest part of the construction costs for the new lung hospital in Ruppertshain was borne by the Baroness Hannah Mathilde von Rothschild. Numerous popular sanctuaries were built around the turn of the century. At the time, half of the adult deaths in Berlin were due to tuberculosis.
Menu in Ruppertshain:
"In a people's sanatorium, good simple food is completely sufficient". (Karl Hess, Dettweiler's deputy)
- 7.30 a.m .: First breakfast
- Milk coffee with bread, rolls and butter and a glass of milk
- 10.00 a.m .: Second breakfast
- Glass of milk with bread and butter
- 1 p.m .: lunch
- Soup, meat and vegetables, ½ bottle of beer or 1 - 2 glasses of wine
- 4 p.m .: coffee with bread and butter
- 7 p.m .: dinner
- Cold meats, salad or cheese with butter, or something similar, plus ½ bottle of beer or tea.
- Patients who suffer from night sweats are given a glass of milk with a few teaspoons of corn brandy before going to bed.
In Beelitz the largest ethnic sanatorium of the German Empire was established in 1902 with 1,200 beds. It was planned and operated according to Dettweiler's therapeutic principles.
The last few years
For health reasons, Peter Dettweiler withdrew from the management of the clinic in 1895, handed the Falkenstein sanatorium over to his previous deputy, Karl Hess, and moved his residence to Kronberg. With the departure of the famous doctor, the Falkenstein sanatorium lost its validity and had to be closed in 1907 due to economic difficulties; it was eventually torn down for fear of infection. In 1909 Kaiser Wilhelm II opened a rest home for officers at the same location. Today it is a luxury class hotel.
Peter Dettweiler, the secret medical councilor and first honorary citizen of Falkenstein, died of cardiac death in Kronberg in 1904 at the age of 67. Dettweiler's guidelines for tuberculosis therapy had spread all over the world.
Works
- About drowsiness, dream state and night walk in judicial-medical relation (Diss., Gießen 1863)
- The rational treatment of pulmonary consumption in Görbersdorf (1873)
- The treatment of pulmonary consumption in closed sanatoriums with a special connection to Falkenstein i./T. (Berlin 1880, 2nd edition 1884)
- Report on seventy-two cases of pulmonary consumption that have been completely cured for three to nine years (Frankfurt am Main 1886)
- The hygienic-dietetic institutional treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (Tuberculosis Congress, Berlin 1899)
literature
- Pagel: Biographical lexicon of outstanding doctors of the nineteenth century . Berlin / Vienna 1901, Sp. 390–391. ( Permalink )
- Öchsner-Pischel, M .: Peter Dettweiler and the lung hospital in Falkenstein ; in: Pneumologie 59 (2005), Heft 5, pp. 349-353
- Averbeck, Hubertus: From cold water therapy to physical therapy. Reflections on people and at the time of the most important developments in the 19th century ; Bremen, EHV 2012, here pp. 479–481; ISBN 978-3-86741-782-2
Web links
- Peter Dettweiler and the Falkenstein Sanatorium
- The Beelitz Heilstätten
- Hermann Brehmer and the Görbersdorf Lung Sanatorium
- Pulmonary sanatorium website
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dettweiler, Peter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German pulmonologist and the founder of the sanatorium system in Germany |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th August 1837 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wintersheim |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 12, 1904 |
| Place of death | Kronberg im Taunus |