Walter Schmitt (surgeon)

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Walter Schmitt (born July 30, 1911 in Strasbourg , † June 6, 2005 in Rostock ) was a German surgeon. From 1957 to 1976 he was director of the Rostock University Surgical Clinic.

Life

Schmitt was the only child of the urban planning engineer August Schmitt (1884–1950) and his wife Thea Schmitt b. Gernegroß (1884–1963). In Alsace-Lorraine was born, he grew up in Berlin on. There he attended the Askanische Gymnasium . After graduating from high school, he studied medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin from 1931 to 1936 . In 1937 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. He was a medical intern with Willi Felix in the Britz hospital . In 1937/38 he represented general practitioners. After obtaining his license to practice medicine, he devoted himself to surgery . From 1938 to 1942 he was an assistant doctor with Mathies at the Wilkestift Hospital in Guben (Niederlausitz). In addition, from 1939 he served as a department doctor in the Guben reserve hospital. In Guben he also met his wife Jutta, who gave him three children. During the Second World War, Schmitt served as a medical officer from 1942 to 1945 , most recently as a medical officer in the Army Reserve (Wehrmacht) , especially on the Eastern Front . At the end of the war he was taken prisoner of war , from which he was released after a short time. He was then head physician at the municipal hospital in Ohrdruf and senior physician at the Gotha regional hospital in 1945/46 .

Greifswald

In 1946 he went to his former boss Willi Felix, who had meanwhile become a professor at the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald . He completed his habilitation with him in 1949. When Felix took up the chair at the Charité in 1950 , Schmitt took over the management of the clinic and the chair on a temporary basis for two years in Greifswald. In 1953 he was given an extraordinary professorship . In 1956/57 he was once again a commissioner. In the Greifswald years he initiated important functional areas and areas of work: a clinic's own blood bank, an orthopedic outpatient department, special work areas for anesthesia, X-ray diagnostics and urology. Supported by the pediatrician Hubertus Brieger , Schmitt specialized in the surgery of newborns, infants and toddlers. He set up a ward for small children, which he headed as a senior physician. Were operated atresia , congenital diaphragmatic defects , megacolon , bladder exstrophy and Myelomeningeozelen . From his special preoccupation with scalds in childhood and the treatment of wound infections , he worked with the microbiologist Siegfried Ortel to develop a concept for the local application of antibiotics to wounds. The Greifswald years also saw the first long stays abroad: 1953 surgery in Budapest, 1954 thoracic surgery in Malmö, 1955 pediatric surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital .

Rostock

In 1957 he was appointed to the chair at the University of Rostock . There he was Professor of Surgery and Pediatric Surgery until 1976. He was also director of the University Surgical Clinic. He pursued the development of surgery according to his ideas and founded several departments by 1967, each headed by a university professor. After 19 years of service, he retired in 1976 . He wrote over 150 publications and published a collection of aphorisms in 1980. From 1972 to 1985 he was editor-in-chief of the Zentralblatt für Chirurgie . In his final years he went on lecture tours through Western and Eastern Europe.

Honors

  • Foreign member of the British Association of Pediatric Surgeons (1955)
  • Member of the scientific advisory board for medicine at the State Secretariat for Higher Education (1957)
  • President of the Society for Surgery of the GDR (1967–1969)
  • Member of the board of the Société Internationale Chirurgie as representative of the GDR (1967)
  • Corresponding member of the Austrian Society for Surgery (1974)
  • Corresponding member of the Real Academia de Medicina y Cirugía de Granada (1983)
  • First chairman of the Society for Surgery at the Universities of Greifswald and Rostock
  • National Prize of the GDR (1960)
  • Honorary member of the Hungarian Surgical Society (1968)
  • Plaque of Honor of the Society for Clinical Medicine (1970)
  • Senior Medical Officer (GDR) (1971)
  • Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze (1976)
  • Honorary member of the Surgical Society of the ČSSR (1976)
  • Sauerbruch Medal of the Society for Surgery of the GDR (1977)
  • Honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock (1981)

Works

Monographs

  • The novocaine blockade of the stellate ganglion. Indications and technique. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, Leipzig 1951.
  • with Alexander Bienengräber and Wolf-Dietrich von Keizer: General surgery. 1st edition. Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, Leipzig 1955. (eleven editions until 1991, one English (1963) and one Russian edition)
  • with Renée Fonó, Imre Littmann and Milkó Vilmos: The congenital defects of the heart and the great vessels. Diagnostics and operative treatment . Leipzig 1957.
  • with Josef Kudász: Reconstructive surgery on the heart and pericardium . Berlin 1959.
  • Time disappears in a hurry. Memories of a surgeon . Hinstorff, Rostock 2003.

Editorships

  • Infection surgery . Leipzig 1968. (3rd edition 1991)
  • Aphorisms, sentences and other things, not just for medical professionals . Leipzig 1980. (6th edition 1990)

literature

  • Siegfried Kiene , T. Müller, W. Brinckmann: Obituary for the death of Professor Dr. Dr. Walter Schmitt. In: Zentralblatt für Chirurgie. 130, 2005, pp. 285-287. (Online version)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contribution to the question of congenital large cystic bronchiectasis. Dissertation.
  2. ^ The stellate blockade and its influence on the heart. Habilitation thesis.
  3. ↑ See list of German surgeons' associations
personal data
SURNAME Schmitt, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and university professor in Greifswald and Rostock
DATE OF BIRTH July 30, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 2005
Place of death Rostock