Walther Hesse

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walther Hesse (born December 27, 1846 in Bischofswerda , † July 19, 1911 in Dresden ) was a German physician and microbiologist . Hesse has made a great contribution to industrial hygiene and introduced agar culture media for the cultivation of bacteria into Robert Koch's laboratory . Together with Friedrich Hugo Härting, Hesse is considered to be the first physician to apply the epidemiological approach not only to infectious diseases, but to cancer.

biography

Walther Hesse was born one of twelve children of a medical doctor. He attended the Kreuzschule in Dresden and studied medicine at the University of Leipzig from 1866 to 1870 . It graduated with a doctorate in pathology with Ernst Leberecht Wagner .

As a ship's doctor, he examined seasickness in 1872 . In New York he met his future wife Fanny Angelina Eilshemius .

Walther Hesse was appointed district doctor for the Schwarzenberg district in the Ore Mountains in 1877 . Among other things, he was responsible for 83 villages in which mostly miners lived. Hesse was shocked by her poor health and the short age that miners typically reached. As early as 1567, Paracelsus had described the occurrence of lung diseases in this area, which he described as mountain addiction . However, the cause of the disease was unknown. Together with the Schneeberg mining doctor Härting, Hesse began to compile individual cases of illness, interview miners, take environmental measurements and carried out a total of 20 autopsies. The epidemiological methods they used had only been used for infectious diseases, but not for diseases that were more difficult to determine, such as cancer. At the end of their investigation it was clear that there was an accumulation of cancer cases among the miners, the cause of which was related to their work. Hesse and Härting suspected as the cause of so-called disease Schneeberger asbestos dust, only later scientists were able to prove that the trigger due to the particular geology closely with the resort BiCoNi ores overgrown uranium ores were. The work that Hesse and Härting had done in Schneeberg were exemplary for a number of other scientists - the best known of these is the work of Ludwig Rehn , who was able to prove in 1895 that there was a connection between work in an aniline processing industry and the occurrence of bladder cancer duration.

During his time in Schwarzenberg, he spent a year with Max von Pettenkofer in Munich to expand his knowledge of industrial hygiene. In Schwarzenberg, the first well-known publications were created to investigate the germ load of water and air.

From 1881 to 1882 Hesse worked in Robert Koch's laboratory . There he examined the cultivation of bacterial cultures. Koch had started to use solid culture media for this. The cultivation of stable (sterilizable) pure cultures was the key for long-term microbiological studies, as required for tuberculosis research. Identifying the tuberculosis pathogen was not possible with gelatine and potatoes either.

Hesse told his wife about the problem, who then suggested the solution: puddings and jellies could be prevented from liquefying using agar-agar , a substrate made from seaweed. Walther Hesse reported about it to Koch and in 1882 he gave his famous speech on the first identification of the tuberculosis bacterium, grown on agar-agar. In the following years Hesse participated in the further development of the technology, among others together with Heyden in Radebeul .

In the last years of his life, Hesse worked as a district doctor in Dresden. He continued his research here with the support of Walther Hempel and he also introduced the pasteurization of milk in Pfunds dairy .

Hesse was buried in the family grave of his father Friedrich Hesse, who had spent the last years of his life near several of his children in Oberlößnitz, in the Radebeul-Ost cemetery.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lung cancer, the mountain sickness in the Schneeberger pits
  2. ^ A b Dan Fagin : Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation . Bantam Books, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-345-53861-1 , p. 127.
  3. ^ Dan Fagin: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation. Bantam Books, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-345-53861-1 , p. 125.
  4. ^ Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim: On Bergsucht or Bergkranckheiten three books, in three tracts, written and described. This includes the origin and origin of the same diseases, as well as their successful preseruatiua and cures. All of them, miners, smelters, tasters, mills masters, goldsmiths, and alchemists, and all those who work in metals and minerals, are highly useful, comforting and indispensable. Ed .: Samuel Zimmermann. Sebaldus Mayer, Dillingen 1567.
personal data
SURNAME Hesse, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician and microbiologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Bischofswerda
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1911
Place of death Dresden