Heinrich Finkelstein

Heinrich Finkelstein ( born July 31, 1865 in Leipzig, † January 28, 1942 in Santiago de Chile ) was a German pediatrician and pioneer of infant medicine.

Life

Heinrich Finkelstein was born on 31 July 1865 in Leipzig. His father was a merchant and head of the Jewish community. From 1884 he studied in Munich and Leipzig natural sciences, especially geology, and received a doctorate in phil. Only after he began the study of medicine, graduating in 1897 with a doctorate. For field he chose pediatrics. His teacher was Otto Heubner, whom he followed from Leipzig to Berlin, as this was the first Professor of Pediatrics at the Charité. Even as Heubner assistant Finkelstein published numerous scientific papers, in 1899 he received his habilitation.

From 1901 to 1918, Heinrich Finkelstein was chief medical officer of the Berlin children asylum in the Kürassierstraße and the Municipal Orphanage, where he combined medical skills with social commitment. In 1918, after the death of Adolf Baginsky, the eminent pediatrician, which also Janusz Korczak had practiced, he was Medical Director of the Emperor and Empress Frederick Children's Hospital in Berlin's working-class district of Wedding.

Heinrich Finkelstein was only a lecturer at the Berlin University, then titular professor. Although he was internationally respected as a pediatrician and honored, he never got as a Jew Ordinary professorship.

In a family, at his own children Heinrich Finkelstein has waived, he lived quietly and modestly with his sister. His love was the mountains. Hiking in the Alps were all his life a source of strength.

The coming to power of the Nazis and their anti-Jewish terror had serious consequences for Heinrich Finkelstein. On 1 March 1933 he retired. In 1935, he lost his teaching license and all the tracks. In 1936 he was invited as a visiting professor to Chicago. But he soon returned to Berlin because he wanted to fall as an old man no one abroad to load.

Only the November pogrom of 1938 led him to leave Germany permanently. Heinrich Finkelstein emigrated to Chile. He was too old and too sick to start again from the beginning can. The Popular Front government in which Salvador Allende was health minister, put him out of an honor pension which has been taken from him after the fall of the government again. Colleagues from the University of Santiago procured him a pro-forma employment as Krankenhausbote which secured him the daily bread, and pulled him in difficult cases as a consultant added.

On January 28, 1942 Heinrich Finkelstein died in Santiago de Chile. His grave is held to date from the university in honor.

Services

Even his teacher Otto Heubner estimated Finkelstein as a careful observer at the bedside, awarded by both erudition as by the Spirit.

As a medical director of the Emperor and Empress Frederick Children's Hospital, Heinrich succeeded Finkelstein to 1925 to reduce the infant mortality rate to 4.3%, a value that was exceeded throughout Germany until decades later.

Closely related to the clinical practice was his scientific work on eating disorders, skin diseases and birth -related damage in the newborn. Together with Louis F. Meyer, he developed the first artificial milk, the milk protein. Many infants who suffered from eating disorders, he has thus saved his life.

Finkelstein's main work is a textbook of infant diseases, which has been for generations of pediatricians in Europe and Latin America, well into the post-war period the standard work. In it, he summarized his experience and his conception of a holistic medicine thus:

" Only those who will properly assess infants and can be treated with success, which gets used to make the sick child and not the diseased intestine to the object of his attention. "

As a doctor, he was always anxious to spare the children fear and pain; diagnostic procedures were not there to satisfy the curiosity of the physician.

With his ideas of a comprehensive public infant care Finkelstein was far ahead of his time, much of it was not realized until decades later. In 1905 he called for, inter alia, the extension of the statutory care for working pregnant women and new mothers, the introduction of an adequate rest period before and after childbirth, the creation of institutions that accommodation without mothers would allow for a longer time living with their children, the free provision of proper infant milk to the poor and the establishment of infant homes and Säuglingshospitälern:

" The rich children live, because all conditions are met, give the guarantee for its prosperity, the poor children die because failed in destitution the diet and care. "

According to him, the Finkelstein - rule is named.

Works

• The Laubstein at High - Aschau. A contribution to the knowledge of the Brachiopodenfacies the lower alpine Doggers. In: New Year book of mineralogy, geology and paleontology. Supplement to Volume 6, pp. 37-104, 1888 (Dissertation, University of Munich, 1888).
• About a case of congenitalem sacral tumor in a seven-week infant. ( MD thesis, University of Leipzig, 1897).
• About middle ear infections in infants. ( Habilitation thesis, Friedrich- Wilhelms- University of Berlin, 1899).
• The effects caused by birth traumas Diseases of Infancy ( = Berlin clinic. Issue 168). Fischer Medical Bookstore, Berlin 1902.
• With Louis Ballin: The orphan infants Berlin and their meals at the Municipal Children asylum. A contribution to matters of institutional treatment of infants. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1904 ( digitized ).
• Textbook of infant diseases. 2 parts. Fischer's Medicinische bookstore H. Kornfeld, Berlin 1905/1908/1912. Second, completely revised edition: Springer, Berlin, 1921.
• Third, completely revised edition: Springer, Berlin, 1924.
• Fourth, completely revised edition: Infant diseases. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1938.
• Spanish translation: Tratado de las enfermedades del niño de pecho. Translation of the third German edition. Ed. Laboratory, Madrid / Buenos Aires in 1929; 2nd edition ( translation of the 3rd German edition). Ed. Laboratory, Barcelona 1932; Tratado de las enfermedades del lactante. 3rd edition ( translation of the fourth German edition). Ed. Laboratory, Barcelona / Madrid / Buenos Aires / Rio de Janeiro in 1941.