Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien
Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien (College of Physicians in Vienna) is a medical society with a long-standing tradition in Austria.
For this purpose, the Gesellschaft der Ärzte organizes scientific events, runs a library and publishes educational videos.
[2] 35 years prior to the foundation of the Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien, young physicians met to discuss relevant scientific information.
Other famous members of the club were Ludwig Freiherr von Türkheim, Franz Wirer and Johann Friedrich Osiander.
Franz Wirer and Ludwig Türkheim, who both were rectors at the University, are considered "the founding fathers" of the organization; however, this was not possible until the privy councilor Andreas Joseph von Stifft, who was against the creation of the society, died.
It is due to the influence of the academy and the college that the faculty of medicine broadened their limited scope beyond medical education and focused increasingly on science and research.
The first significant contribution was made by the second president of the society, Franz Wirer, who bequeathed his private book collection to the Gesellschaft der Ärzte after his death.
After Carl Rokitansky was elected president of the society, in 1850, the association focused increasingly on the natural sciences, leading to a new direction for medicine and to the dawning the new era of the Second Medical School (Zweite Wiener Medizinische Schule).
It marks the elevated status of medicine from the philosophic era to one in which scientific discoveries and clinical manifestations were correlated to pathological findings.
A few weeks later, the "Wiener Medizinische Gesellschaft" (Viennese Medical Society) was founded, and Otto Planner-Plan was appointed as chairman.
[7] Leopold Arzt, the chairman of the university's dermatology clinic, began to rebuild the Gesellschaft der Ärzte.
In the immediate post-war years, the college focused on infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, typhus, pest, pox, erysipelas, rabies but more than anything else, the cholera epidemic.
The section of pharmacology contributed to the creation of an Apothecaries Act for the Kaiserstaat Austria, to prevent materialists and spice merchants from selling drugs.
The medical students under his supervision used to visit the obstetrics ward directly after leaving the autopsy site, without washing their hands.
Florian Heller presented a reagent to measure the sugar level in urine, which was subsequently adopted into hospital routine.
By 1874, the laboratory had become a state-of-the-art chemical analysis unit, and after 1889, through the influence of Ernst Freud, advanced further, becoming an innovative research institute which developed techniques pertaining to blood coagulation, cell membranes, gastric autodigestion, the effect of insulin and other biologic processes.
Carl Koller discovered the anesthetic effect of cocaine and Ludwig Türck, who later became the first tenured professor of laryngology, invented a laryngoscope and marked the birth of endoscopy.
[15] This first endoscope was continuously refined, and in 1879, the Nietze-Leiter-cystoscope, which is used to examine the urinary bladder,[16] was presented in a meeting of the College of Physicians.
The College of Physicians established a committee for prevention and therapy of tuberculosis and finally published a report with four crucial points: informing the population, reducing exposure to pathogens by improving equipment hygiene, preventing infection, establishing diagnostic and treatment methods through bacteriological tests, by isolating people exposed to tuberculosis, and providing work.
[10] Even the first angiogram was produced in Vienna by Eduard Haschek and the idea to use X-rays in radiotherapy came from Leopold Freund, who very successfully treated a naevus with it.
[22] In 1901, the journal “Wiener klinische Wochenschrift” published an article by Karl Landsteiner entitled “Über Agglutinationserscheinungen normalen menschlichen Blutes”, which is seen as the foundation of grouping; this changed the picture in medicine completely.
Due to the growing audience, the society moved to the 4th floor of the Domkapitel at Stephansplatz in 1841, where a library and a reading room could be built.
the group relocated many times again until 1855, when the government provided a gratis flat for them at Teinfaltstraße; this was the society's headquarter for the next forty years.
