EK - Medicine

2007

EK – Medicine

Die Bausch-Bibliothek in Schweinfurt: Katalog [The Bausch Library in Schweinfurt: Catalog]. Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Halle (Saale). Ed. Uwe Müller et al. Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2004. 764 p. ill. 25 cm. (Acta historica Leopoldina, 32). ISBN 3-8047-2090-0: EUR 49.80 [07-1-265]

A project begun in the 1980s to catalog the contents of the Bausch Library in Schweinfurt has provided in its published catalog a unique resource for the history of science, especially medicine. The library is named after Schweinfurt city physician Johann Laurentius Bausch (1605-1665) and his father Leonhard Bausch (1574-1636). The Bausch family assembled about two-thirds of the current collection of 1,829 volumes containing 5,200 titles. The rest was collected by their progeny, five generations of doctors. Johann Laurentius Bausch had already stipulated in his will that the library should only be passed on to male heirs, or, ultimately, to the city of Schweinfurt and should never be broken up. After the library was given to the city of Schweinfurt in 1813, parts of it were separated and are now in various institutions in Strasbourg. This story is told in detail in the introductory chapters of the catalog.

Surprisingly, rather than alphabetical author order, which one has come to expect from a library catalog, this printed catalog follows the specially categorized order of the books on the shelves in the original library (which leads, e.g., to Bibles in 20 different places). There is an author index and a second index of printers, publishers, and places of publication. The catalog entries are not always orthographically precise, so that differentiating among various editions is sometimes impossible. It would have been helpful to include references to other large cataloging projects such as Verzeichnis der Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts (VD16),Verzeichnis der Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts (VD17), Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW), etc. Despite its flaws, this catalog opens this significant early medical library to a wider public. However, it is no substitute for a trip to Schweinfurt. [er/hh]

Lexikon deutschsprachiger Homöopathen [Dictionary of German-Speaking Homeopaths]. Fritz D. Schroers for the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert-Bosch-Stiftung. Stuttgart: Haug, 2006. xx, 171 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-8304-7254-4: EUR 39.95 [07-2-650]

This dictionary contains bio-bibliographies of 636 deceased German-speaking homeopathic doctors. The selection was made according to the importance accorded the individuals by their colleagues, e.g., in obituaries. Each entry contains name, birth and death dates and places, university attended, year and place of award of the doctorate and other degrees, dissertation title, and in the case of Jews, religion. Very few are accompanied by a portrait. The biographical data are just a half column at the very longest. These are followed by a selective bibliography listing works (three to five titles) and literature. More detailed bibliographical lists are available on the Web at http://www.igm-bosch.de. As a supplement to the many dictionaries of doctors, which tend to neglect the homeopaths, this volume belongs in libraries that collect in the area of history of medicine. [sh/hh]

Jüdische Kinderärzte 1933-1945: entrechtet, geflohen, ermordet = Jewish Pediatricians: Victims of Persecution 1933-1945. Eduard Seidler for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kinderheilkunde und Jugendmedizin. New, rev. ed. Basel; Freiburg [et al.]: Karger, 2007. 547 p. ill 23 cm. ISBN 978-3-8055-8284-1: EUR 59.90 [07-1-266]

The 1st edition (2000) of this dictionary of persecuted Jewish pediatricians in Germany (including Vienna and Prague) was reviewed in RREA 6:327. The work was first commissioned in 1995 by the German Society of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. At their October 1998 annual meeting in Dresden, the Board of Directors expressed their regret (reprinted in this edition on page 1) over the Society’s complicity and guilt in the exclusion and persecution of its Jewish members. This declaration carries special weight, because over 50 percent of Germany’s pediatricians were Jewish or otherwise politically undesired persons.

The new publisher has reprinted a large portion of the original text and has expanded the biographical section (p. 123-422) by some 50 pages, in a revised format with 35 new entries. The statistical section lists 1,418 doctors: 1,283 from Germany, 99 from Vienna, and 35 from Prague. This number is further broken down by personal (mis) fortune: 773 (including 251 female doctors) were persecuted, of whom 493 emigrated or fled, 89 were deported (of whom only 14 survived), 69 died of suicide or other fatality, 27 suffered other fates, and the fates of 95 are unknown.

The appendix to the biographical section gives many details as to these doctors’ place of residence, birth and death dates and places, address of their practice, education, military service, publications, and places of emigration or deportation. Testimonies from diaries or surviving relatives are also included, as are in some cases quotations from attack articles from the local press.

The biographical section has a long introduction: 59 pages in German followed by 53 pages in English. Here several themes are set out, including the role of Jews in pediatrics, the Society’s policy toward Jews, the waves of emigration, and a discussion of the Nazis’ vision for pediatrics. An 83-page appendix contains the above-mentioned statistics and personal data, plus a source index, bibliography index, and a list of names (but lacks the further references given in the 1st edition).

The conclusion of the review to the 1st edition bears repeating here. “This impressive undertaking should challenge other medical specialties likewise to confront their own ‘brown-shirted’ past.” [sh/ga]

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