Jenny Thomann-Koller
Comparing these with the Hereditary Burden among Healthy People), published in 1895, she introduced a control group which challenged the then-popular theory of degeneration and eugenics.
Dr. Heim-Vögtlin told Jenny about the difficulties she would face during her medical studies and her time as a physician, but also described the practice of medicine as very meaningful and rewarding.
The three of them, Jenny Koller (after 1901 Thomann-Koller), Ida Schmid (after 1896 Hilfiker-Schmid), and Pauline Gottschall, established private practices in Zürich, which they maintained for over thirty years.
The fourth, Josephina Theresia Zürcher (after 1899 Dr. Fallscheer-Zürcher), spent three decades as a physician in the Middle East, often in association with missionary hospitals and attending to the victims of the 1895 Armenian massacres.
Her findings showed that "a full 59% of the healthy were hereditarily burdened", a number that was "not much lower than the hereditary figure for the mentally ill, and a proper statistical match [...] would narrow the divide".
[6] Koller therefore concluded that this “proved the effect of the regenerative factor.”[7] With this assertion, she challenged the widely accepted theory of degeneration among psychiatrists (including her own professor Auguste Forel), and suggested a more sophisticated/differentiated diagnosis regarding the inheritability of mental illness.
[8] For the next three decades, Koller's study (as well as Diem's, after 1905), became the subject of an intense discussion among renowned biologists and psychiatrists in journals, textbooks and international conferences.
Among those who discussed Koller's findings were Korbinian Brodmann, Karl Jaspers, Julius Wagner von Jauregg, Emil Kraepelin, and Ernst Rüdin.
Even the most recent scholarship on the history of statistics, eugenics and psychiatry refers to and acknowledges the significance of Jenny Koller's seminal study.
Recently Katharina Banzhaf, Bernd Gausemeier, Theodore M. Porter and Kenneth Kendler, Astrid Klee have published on Koller's findings.
Notwithstanding her intensive interest in and study of psychiatric questions and her clinical experience at the Mental Asylum Rheinau, Dr. Koller (after 1901 Dr. Thomann-Koller) decided to go into private practice in gynecology and pediatrics.
[9] “She had a pronounced sense of the inner worth of an individual regardless of his or her social standing.” Moreover, she was intent on keeping up with medical improvements and to this effect, traveled to Berlin for a course on obstetrics.
Their responsibilities included the care of patients within their department in conjunction with the in-house physician, mutual assistance during operations and on Sundays or holidays.
