Rudolf Buchheim

Rudolf Buchheim ( * March 1, 1820 in Budissin (now Bautzen ), † December 25, 1879 in Gießen ) was a German physician and pharmacologist. Together with his student Oswald Schmiedeberg he founded the pharmacology as an independent medical- biological compartment.

Life

Buchheim's father was a doctor. Rudolf studied in Dresden and Leipzig medicine. The Leipzig Professor of Physiological Chemistry, Karl Gotthelf Lehmann (1812-1863) sparked his lifelong interest in the chemical aspects of medicine. In 1845 he was awarded his doctorate for Dr. med. Early orphaned and poor, he earned his living with medical- writing activities. So he translated into German ( and edited at the same time ) the work of British physician and professor of Materia Medica Jonathan Pereira ( 1804-1853 ) The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics. The translation was published in two volumes in 1846 (844 pages) and 1848 (929 pages). Oswald Schmiedeberg wrote in his appreciation Buchheims: " The time Buchheim related to this processing ... can be used as his apprenticeship on pharmacological and other relevant areas are considered. Another teacher than himself, he has not had in these areas. "His literary work made ​​Buchheim so well known that he in 1847, two years after graduation, only associate, then full professor of pharmacology, dietetics and history Encyclopedia of Medicine was at the medical faculty of the University of Dorpat.

Dorpat, now Tartu, then belonged to Russia, but was the university in German. It flourished: Here seemed to Buchheims time the biochemist Carl Schmidt, who discovered the hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice, the anatomist and physiologist Friedrich Heinrich Bidder, the pharmacist Georg Dragendorff and the anatomist Karl Wilhelm von Kupffer, namesake of the Kupffer cells in the liver. Shortly after Buchheim worked in Dorpat, the physiologist Alexander Schmidt (1831-1894), who discovered the thrombin, and the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Buchheim taught in Dorpat in the basement of his home and with his own money a pharmacological laboratory one. 1860 replaced the Faculty by a spacious new Department of Pharmaceutics in the Theatrum Anatomicum.

Schmiedeberg: "So Buchheim is the founder of the first pharmacological institute, which has remained almost the only one of its kind, two Decennien through, as it essentially only Pharmacognostic collections ', but gave no institutions for experimental pharmacological work at other universities. In this ... favorable soil itself Buchheims activity that led to a drug on an experimental basis doctrine developed. " His experiments led Buchheim with doctoral candidates, 90 in his Dorpat time. The dissertations were written in part or in Latin, and its level was relatively high. Schmiedeberg 's a list with short summaries, including his own dissertation of 1866 over the quantitative determination of chloroform in the blood and its behavior against the same. In the years 1853-1856, the first edition of Buchheim's textbook of pharmacology appeared. He did it first call draft scientific pharmacology, in the knowledge that, as it was called in a review, " the newer exact research method and a logically disciplined way of thinking has only to the first degree of knowledge, namely, of not knowing, led us ."

Twice Buchheim was three years dean of the medical faculty of Tartu. In 1863 he refused a professorship at the University of Breslau. In 1866 he received the same calls to Giessen and Bonn. He accepted the call to Giessen. There, in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, he promised a better promotion of pharmacology in the Prussian Breslau and Bonn. However, he had in pouring first a laboratory in his own home set up. He had only a few Ph.D. students here. During the planning of a new institute was nearing the end, he died in 1879. His grave in the Old Cemetery in casting is obtained.

The emergence of Pharmacology

Pereira's book treated according to the original title the materia medica, and Dorpat Buchheim's chair was dedicated to, among other things pharmacology. Thus, it was thought at that time the accumulated knowledge about the properties and the therapeutic use of any kind of fabrics. The compendia described in detail medicinal plants, drugs and minerals. However, the supposed knowledge of the therapeutic use was often suspect. It was based at best on observations of patients without control experiments, often on only a dogma as the doctrine of signatures. That there must be a physical-chemical- biological interaction between a material and the living creatures, barely existed as a thought, let alone as an explicit theory.

Although there were before Buchheim experiments with the aim to detect such an interaction for individual substances. The path shown especially two French: François Magendie, who found, for example, that the place of the convulsant effect of strychnine is the spinal cord, and Claude Bernard, who found, for example, that curare paralyzes through an effect on the motor end plate.

Magendie and Bernard understood, however, as physiologists, seek to understand the normal functioning of the body, and used drugs, whether drugs or poisons, just as a tool for this goal. Buchheim and later Schmiedeberg's goal was to physico- chemical-biological understanding of the interaction of all drugs and poisons living things - to be understood as cause-effect chains - and to make this understanding of the people available. That was a goal of its own and new style, and the researches to achieve it, since the tray form pharmacology. Buchheim formulated in the preface of his Pereira - editing the two directions of interaction: "It occurred to us here at once two questions in the way, namely 1) how to change the drug from the organism and 2) the extent to act the same altering the organism. "The two directions are called today pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

Buchheim created the pharmacology as a subject sui generis. About Buchheim's own research already ruled Schmiedeberg: " ( The results included) no great discoveries, although they extend our knowledge in many areas significantly and formed especially important foundations for further research and are still forming now. The main significance of this work lies in the fact that was introduced in the experimental research in these wchtigen branch of medicine through it and gradually naturalized in him. " An enduring result comes from the dissertation of Krich 1857 Experimenta quaedam pharmacologicae de Oleis Ricini, croton et Euphorbiae Lathyridis (Some pharmacological experiments on the castor oil, croton oil and the oil of Kreuzblättrigen Spurge): What has a laxative effect when the oils are produced from the triglycerides in the intestine free acids, in the case of castor oil ricinoleic acid.

The pharmacology in Dorpat to Buchheim

As Buchheim in 1867 went to Giessen, his former graduate student Schmiedeberg was his successor, and remained until he was appointed in 1872 to Strasbourg. List of the first successor at Dorpat Buchheim:

To Koberts time not only 13 volumes of a series of works of the Pharmacological Institute at Dorpat, but also five volumes of a series published Historical Studies of the Pharmacological Institute of the Imperial University of Dorpat ( 1889-1896 ). During these years the Russification of the Baltics was continued. The working language at the university was Russian. The professors had to either keep or go the lectures in Russian. Kobert, although Imperial State Council, left Dorpat in 1896.

The University shared the fate of their country. Also at the Pharmacological Institute, there was a "Russian interlude " with Professors Czirwinsky and Lavrov. In February 1918, Estonia proclaimed its independence. In April 1918, the State University was founded at Dorpat on the German side. Ans Pharmacological Institute in 1918 Paul Trendelenburg appointed, but in the same year went as a successor of Kobert to Rostock. The university was - now under the name University of Tartu - Estonian National University with Estonian as a working language. In it, the Pharmacological Institute continues to exist, still the same, the Buchheim in 1859, based in the Theatrum Anatomicum. 1970 an international, dedicated to the 150th birthday Buchheims meeting was held there.