Walter Schiller (doctor)

Walter Schiller (born December 3, 1887 in Vienna , Austrian Empire; † May 2, 1960 in Evanston , USA ) was an Austrian-American physician, after whom a test he developed for tumor cells is named.

Life

Schiller was the only child of the Commercial Councilor Friedrich Schiller and his wife Emma.

During his studies in Vienna he worked as an assistant for physiology to Professor Siegmund Exner and in pathology for Professor Anton Weichselbaum .

In 1912 he received his doctorate from the University of Vienna Dr. med. In the same year he worked as a bacteriologist in the service of the Bulgarian Army during the Balkan War. During the First World War he served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, where he was entrusted with the management of a medical laboratory; it was used in Bosnia, Russia, Turkey and Palestine. After the end of the First World War, he worked from 1918 to 1921 as a pathologist at the second military hospital in Vienna.

From 1921 to 1936 he was laboratory manager at the second university women's clinic at the University of Vienna; There he carried out his meticulous studies on uterine tumors and developed his iodine test. The results were published in German in 1927 and in English in 1933.

Due to the threat of the emerging National Socialism (Schiller was of Jewish descent), he emigrated to the United States of America in 1937 with his wife and two young daughters. There he took up the position of laboratory manager at the Jewish Hospital in New York in 1937 and 1938, and from 1938 to 1944 he was director of the department of anatomical pathology at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

His best-known scientific contribution was the development of the so-called Schiller iodine test for the detection of glycogen - poor cells in the epithelium of the cervix , for the early detection of squamous cell carcinoma . This is also called the "Schiller test".

In addition, together with Mathias-Marie Duval, he discovered the Schiller-Duval corpuscles, a cytological structure that occurs as a typical feature of certain testicular tumors in childhood.

Web links

• Picture (1937) by Walter Schiller (r) together with Clarence Little (l) w. Dr. Maude Slye (m)
• Family tree Schiller family

literature

• Gruhn JG, Roth LM. 1998. History of Gynecological Pathology. V. Dr Walter Schiller. Int J Gynecol Pathol; 17: 3806.
• Young RH. 2007. The rich history of gynecological pathology: brief notes on some of its personalities and their contributions. Pathology 39, 6-25.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ International Journal of Gynecological Pathology . Volume 17, Issue 4, October 1998, pp. 380-386 ( journals.lww.com ).