Famous Doctors on Stamps

Hi all, much as we hate these stamps, it seems to be trying to get the younger generations interested in our noble art of stamp collecting ....

 

Adolf Lorenz (1854-1946) was an austrian orthopaedist.Born in a
not well-off family,he could go to secondary school and later to
university only with the help of grants and scholarships.
Unlike in the US,orthopaedic,as a branch of medicine,was her
infancy in Austria and Europe.
Due to an allergy to the then used disinfectant carbolic acid,he had
to refrain from "bloody surgery".
He used plaster casts to correct deformations like club foot and the
hip.(The tree at right of the stamp shall symbolize this technique.)
He soon became famous and "operated" in many foreign countries,
however mainly in the US.
He lost his aquired considerable wealth after the Great War,because
he had put his money in austrian war-loans.
In his later years he worked together with his older son in their own
clinic.
According to Wikipedia,Adolf Lorenz did miss the Nobel-Prize by
a single vote.
However his younger son,Konrad Lorenz,the probably most well
known behavioural scientist,won the prize in 1973.

Stamp issued Sept.19th,1997

 

Walter Florey was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the development of penicillin.

60c stamp issued 2012, from Australian Nobel Pri ze winners

 

Emil von Behring 1854 - 1917 and Paul Ehrlich 1854 - 1915
Behring was born into the (patch-work) family of a teacher with 13
children.He got a scolarship for secondary education and studied
medicine sponsored by the army.With that came the obligation to
serve a time as an army medical officer.
For a time he became an assistant to Robert Koch.It was Koch who
suggested,that Behring and another of his assistants,Paul Ehrlich
should work together on their common field: serology.
A serum against diphteria was the result,the first serum used in medicine.
The merits mainly went to Behring,who got the first nobel-prize for
medicine in 1901.
The second major achievement of Behring was the development of
a serum aginst tetanus.
Ehrlich,who felt badly treated by Ehrlich and the medical establishment,
led the way to the invention of the chemo-therapy.
He was awarded the medicine nobel-prize in 1908 together with
Ilja Metschnikow (german spelling).
stamps:
top row,issued Nov.26th,1940 (50 years diphteria-serum)
middle,issued March 13th,1954 (100th birth anniversary)
bottom,issued March 11th,2004 (150th birth anniversary)

 

Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902)
It is difficult to describe Virchow.He was an expert on so many fields.
Founding father of the modern pathology.Anthropolgy,social hygenie,
archaeology and politics were his main subjects.
He was the first one,who found that cells can derive from cell division
only.
In a large study with more than six millions pupils he proved,that
nothing like pure race children did exist in Germany.(That is why he
later,long after his death he was hated by the Nazis.)
He coined the term social hygenie,meaning that poverty and bad
social conditions were the main reason for the poor health of workers.
To change this,would be the obligation of the state.
He was a member of the house of representatives of Berlin from 1859
till his death,also member of the parliament of Prussia and from 1880-
1893 member of the German Reichstag.
He was very critical of Bismark´s politics.In 1865,he was challenged
to a duel by Bismark,after he had called him,although not expressis
verbis,a liar.
Virchow declined: "A duel is not an contemporary form of discussion !"
He initiated a modern sewerage system and treatment for Berlin
and the buiding of a number of museums.
He worked with Heinrich Schliemann in Troy and could persuade
him to bring the artefacts (treasure of Priamos) to Berlin,instead of
London,as Schliemann had planned before.
He was a protestant,but critical to established churches.
In 1877 he defended himself in the Reichstag,saying that the quotation:
"I have disected thousands of corpses,but never found a trace of a soul"
was one,he had never made.
It is not possible,to mention here only a fair part of his activities.He was
quite close to the ideal of a "homo universalis".
His death was rather curios:
In 1902,aged 80 he jumped from a still moving street-car,fell down and
got a femoral neck fracture.He never recovered and died 8 months later.

Stamp issued on Jan.24th,1953. (from a series of 10 stamps)

 

issued Nov.3rd,2005
Robert Koch (1843-1910),likely the doctor most often featured
on stamps worldwide.
His works on anthrax,tuberculosis,cholera and tropical diseases
were fundamental for bacteriology.

issued Feb.18th,1982
But there were also controversies,like the failure of "Tuberkelin" and
his quarrels with Louis Pasteur.

issued May 27th,1960
But most likely,it needs a great man to commit great mistakes.

issued Nov.4th,1960

 

Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951),born in Barmen (today Wuppertal),
was a leading surgeon of the first half of the last century.
He was the co-inventor of a vacuum chamber,what made possible open
thorax surgery.In 1905 he performed the first surgery of this kind,what
made him an " international star surgeon".
In 1910 he became ordinarius for surgery in Zürich.
He treated,like all over his career many rich and powerful,charging enormous fees,but also needy people for free.
In 1914 he went back to Germany,to volunteer for war-service.
He became one of the leading medical officers of the army,but
was also sent on special diplomatic missions abroad.
After the war he taught and practised in Munic,before in 1928 he
moved to Berlin,to head the surgery department at Germany´s biggest
and most prestigious hospital,the "Charitee".
He was also working on the field of medical prothesises,quite an
important field due to the war.
During the Nazi-rule he was ambiguous to the regime,praising it on
many occasions,but also publicly to critizise programs,like the
"Euthanasia of unworthy life",the killing of mentally handicapped.
In WW II he was back to the army,ranked as a general of the medical
service.
After 1945 he remained in soviet part of Berlin in his former position
at the Charitee and as a state-counciller.However due to US-pressure
he was removed,but soonly re-instated by the Russians and the
german communist party.
In his last years he became a problem with his advancing dementia,
but could be convinced in the end to resign from the surgery-theatre.

Many annecdotes about him were circulated.A movie about his life
was made.No surgeon up to Christian Barnard,ever assumed
such a stardom like Sauerbruch.
Stamp issued May 15th,1975,commemorating Sauerbruch´s
100th birth anniversary.

 

Albrecht von Graefe (1828-1870) was the inventor of modern
ophthamology in Germany.Born into a welloff family of medical officers,
he had a breath-taking career:
At the age of fifteen he started to study medicine,mathematics and
physics in Berlin.With nineteen he was a doctor.He studied on in Prague,
Vienna,Paris and London and returned to Berlin in 1852.
There he habilitaded (became a professor) and opened a clinic with
120 beds.In his clinic all patients were treated equally,regardless of their
status or wealth or the lack of both.
He established ophthamology as an medical science of her own.
Till then she had been a sub-division of the surgical department.
He was very active in writing papers and books and invented a number
of instruments and surgery methods.
He died from tuberculosis,aged 42 only.
The stamp shows a part of his memorial monument in Berlin.
Stamp issued May 22nd,1978,commemorating von Greafe´s 150th
birth-anniversary.

 

Ernst Ludwig Heim 1747-1834 obtained his doctorate in 1772.
Till 1783 he worked in the prussian public health service,when he
opened his private practice in Berlin.
He was an immensly popular doctor,who had patients from all kinds
of society.He was famous for his humour and because he treated all
patients alike.As a doctor for the poor he treated thousands every
year free of charge and all to often payed for their medicins as well.
After he had the eight year old Alexander von Humboldt as a patient,
he became his teacher for botany.
Another patient was the prince elector of Hesse.At the first consultation
he said: "Highness is as stiff,as I always thought,a Prince Elector
would be".
Heim also performed the first small-pox vaccination in Berlin.
He was also the last personal doctor of Queen Luise of Prussia,
but could not help her,when she died of cancer in 1810,only 34 years
of age. (see also famous women thread).
In 1822 he became a Honorary Citizen of Berlin on his 50-years
jubilee as a doctor and for his service to the poor.

 

Johann Christian Senckenberg 1707-72.
He was born in Frankfurt/Main,at the time one of many german states,
where he lived all his life,apart from his studies in Halle.
He was married three times,but his wifes and all theirs children died
from different illnesses in the course of less than seventeen years.
He was a doctor of high reputation and a very wealthy man.
He established a foundation to what he gave all his money.
The foundation was to promote medical science and help needy
doctors and nurses.
He also founded the "Bürger Hospital" (Citizens Hospital) of Frankfurt.
He died,when he inspected the building progress of the hospital,when
he fell to death from a scaffolding.

Stamps issued Nov.2nd,1953 (from a set of 4)
and
Feb.8th,2007,in commemoration of his 300th birth anniversary.
The building on the stamp shows a painting of the Bürger Hospital.