Robert Wilms

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Robert Friedrich Wilms (also Robert Ferdinand Wilms ; born September 9, 1824 in Arnswalde in the Neumark , † September 24, 1880 in Berlin ) was a Prussian-German physician and surgeon .

Robert Wilms
General doctor Dr. Wilms cares for a wounded man, 1870/71. Relief on the Berlin Victory Column

Life

Born the son of a pharmacist, Wilms moved early with his parents to Stargard in Pomerania , where he attended high school. From 1842 to 1846 he studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , became an assistant to Johannes Müller and in 1847, after having passed the state examination , began a scientific trip to Prague and Vienna, after which he went to the newly opened hospital in 1848 - and Diakonissenanstalt Bethanien in Berlin joined as an assistant doctor .

There he turned more and more to surgery and became an ordaining physician in 1852 and chief physician in 1862 . Soon appointed to the secret medical council, in 1858 he also became a permanent member of the senior examination commission for the field of surgery.

Under his leadership, the hospital was able to establish itself as a center for surgery, so that young doctors tried to find an assistant position. His students included:

In parallel to his work as chief physician, but outside the university, Wilms ran a private practice in Berlin.

In 1861 he became the personal physician of Prince George of Prussia . Wilms participated as a consulting general physician in the wars of 1866 ( German War ) and 1870/71 ( Franco-German War ) and received the Iron Cross first class for this . In 1866 he was appointed to the commission for the reform of the military medical system and as an examiner to the examination commission for senior staff physicians .

Robert Wilms died on September 24, 1880 in Berlin at the age of 56 from the effects of an infection that he had contracted during one of his operations. He was buried in Cemetery II of the Jerusalem and New Churches in front of the Hallesches Tor . The grave is preserved.

Specialty

Wilms brought about a renaissance of tracheotomy in diphtheria . He also refined the surgical technique when cutting the external urethra ( urethrotomy ). - Together with his colleague Bernhard von Langenbeck , Robert Ferdinand Wilms was one of the surgeons and diagnosticians of far-reaching importance.

Honors

In 1883 the city of Berlin honored the work of Robert Wilms with the construction of a memorial that was located in front of the portal of the Bethanien Hospital until the Second World War. Since 1956, only the bust created by Rudolf Siemering has stood southeast of the entrance to the current Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

Wilmsstrasse, named in honor of Robert Wilms, has existed in the Kreuzberg district - west of the Am Urban hospital - since 1892 .

Memorial stele at Mariannenplatz 2, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Appreciation

Wilms made himself famous neither as a public teacher nor as a writer; But alongside Bernhard von Langenbeck he was the most sought-after doctor and most famous diagnostician and surgeon in Berlin. In addition, he has earned his merits, above all, by improving the hygienic conditions in Bethanien, where in his day the institution was still cleaned with the water from the Luisenstadt Canal . Wilms tried in vain to draw attention to the inadequate hygiene in the house, and when more and more successfully operated patients died of infections , in desperation he set up camp in the garden and from then on operated in a well-ventilated military tent outdoors. He also wrote a comprehensive complaint; In this he complained on fifty pages about "the infected canvas in the operating tents, the too dense planting of the gardens, insufficient ventilation in the sick rooms", garden fertilizers, insufficient cleanliness of deaconess clothes , the careless handling of kitchen waste and sewer water, the lack of an insulating barrack , the infection of the ground in the yard by cesspools and the bad well water.

Although he never developed his own teaching profession, a number of excellent surgeons have emerged from his school. In 1883 his bust, modeled by Siemering , was placed in Berlin next to the entrance portal of today's Künstlerhaus Bethanien , which - destroyed in World War II - was reconstructed in 1956.

literature

Web links

Commons : Robert Wilms  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 236.
personal data
SURNAME Wilms, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilms, Robert Friedrich (full name); Wilms, Robert Ferdinand (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Arnswalde
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1880
Place of death Berlin