Her parents were Ebba von Schau and Axel Frederik Julius Christian Lassen.

Later, with the support of the British War Relief Society she started a clinic at St. Marys Hospital in East London.

[3] She had been advised to not mention that it was a German therapy during the war but she had refused to remove the attribution to the technique's developer.

[1] A 1969 BBC profile of her work featured an interview with a surgeon who said: "There's no question about what she achieves, but I'm damned if I know how she does it".

[6] When she was in her seventies she began to lose her sight, but undeterred she went to Calcutta for two years where she worked with Mother Teresa.