Lecture

1956 · 31822AB — 1956. Germany 1956 - 1976. Octavo. Very good condition with only minor signs of wear. Signed and inscribed items by Forssmann are of great rarity. The Nobel Lecture alone is very scarce and very rarely available signed. Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann Forssmann in English; 29 August 1904 – 1 June 1979 was a German researcher and physician from Germany who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Andre Frederic Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards for developing a procedure that allowed cardiac catheterization. In 1929 he put himself under local anesthesia and inserted a catheter into a vein of his arm. Not knowing if the catheter might pierce a vein he put his life at risk. Forssmann was nevertheless successful; he safely passed the catheter into his heart. Forssmann was born in Berlin on 29 August 1904. Upon graduating from Askanisches Gymnasium he entered the University of Berlin to study medicine passing the State Examination in 1929. He hypothesized that a catheter could be inserted directly into the heart for such applications as directly delivering drugs injecting radiopaque dyes or measuring blood pressure. The fear at the time was that such an intrusion into the heart would be fatal. To prove his point he decided to try the experiment on himself. In 1929 while working in Eberswalde he performed the first human cardiac catheterization. He ignored his department chief and persuaded the operating-room nurse in charge of the sterile supplies Gerda Ditzen to assist him. She agreed but only on the promise that he would do it on her rather than on himself. However Forssmann tricked her by restraining her to the operating table and pretending to locally anaesthetise and cut her arm whilst actually doing it on himself. He anesthetized his own lower arm in the cubital region and inserted a urinary catheter into his antecubital vein threading it partly along before releasing Ditzen who at this point realised the catheter was not in her arm and telling her to call the X-ray department. They walked some distance to the X-ray department on the floor below where under the guidance of a fluoroscope he advanced the catheter the full 60 cm into his right ventricular cavity. This was then recorded on X-Ray film showing the catheter lying in his right atrium. The head clinician at Eberswalde although initially very annoyed recognized Werner's discovery when shown the X-rays; he allowed Forssmann to carry out another catheterization on a terminally ill woman whose condition improved after being given drugs in this way. An unpaid position was created for Forssmann at the Berliner Charité Hospital working under Ferdinand Sauerbruch although once Sauerbruch saw his paper he was dismissed for continuing without his approval. Sauerbruch commented "You certainly can't begin surgery in that manner". Facing such disciplinary action for self-experimentation he was initially forced to leave the Charité but was later re-instated until again being forced to leave in 1932 for not meeting scientific expectations. His surgical skills were noted however and he was recommended to another hospital where he worked for a while before leaving in 1933 after marrying Dr. Elsbet Engel a specialist in urology there. Finding it difficult to get a job with his reputation he quit cardiology and took up urology. He then went on to study urology under Karl Heusch at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin. Later he was appointed Chief of the Surgical Clinic at both the City Hospital at Dresden-Friedrichstadt and the Robert Koch Hospital in Berlin. From 1932 to 1945 he was a member of the Nazi Party. At the start of World War II he became a medical officer. In the course of his service he rose to the rank of Major until he was captured and put into a U.S. POW camp. Upon his release in 1945 he worked as a lumberjack and then as a country medic in the Black Forest with his wife. In 1950 he began practice as a urologist in Bad Kreuznach. During the time of his imprisonment his paper was read by André Frédéric Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards. They developed ways of applying his technique to heart disease diagnosis and research. In 1954 he was given the Leibniz Medal of the German Academy of Sciences. In 1956 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Cournand Richards and Forßmann. After winning the Nobel Prize he was given the position of Honorary Professor of Surgery and Urology at the University of Mainz. In 1961 he became an honorary professor at the National University of Córdoba. In 1962 he became a member of the Executive Board of the German Society of Surgery. He also became a member of the American College of Chest Physicians honorary member of the Swedish Society of Cardiology the German Society of Urology and the German Child Welfare Association. Wikipedia unknown