Walter Pagel

Walter Pagel ( born November 12, 1898 in Berlin, † March 25, 1983 in London ) was a German - British pathologist and medical historian.

Life

Walter Pagel was the son of the medical historian Julius Leopold Pagel. In 1920 he married Dr. Magda Koll, with whom he lived until her death in 1980. The two had a son, Bernard Pagel.

After graduating from the Friedrichs -Gymnasium in Berlin Pagel studied from 1916 to 1921 medicine at the University of Berlin. From August 1917 to November 1918 he did military service as a stretcher-bearer. After the approval in 1922 in Berlin Pagel was from 1923 to 1926 and from 1928 to 1930 employed again at the tuberculosis hospital in the city of Berlin in Sommerfeld ( Osthavelland ). In between ( 1926-1928 ) he worked as a prosector at the Pathological Institute of the University of Tübingen. After a short stay at the Institute for the History of Medicine in Leipzig in 1930 as an assistant Pagel went to Heidelberg, where he habilitated in 1930 for the compartments Pathological Anatomy and History of Medicine. 1933 Pagel had with his wife and three year-old child because of his Jewish ancestry to emigrate ( his older brother Albert Pagel came to the Holocaust ). He lived first in Paris and later in Cambridge, where he worked on a tuberculosis clinic, and has published numerous works on the history of medicine, even though he worked full time as a pathologist at various London hospitals. Pagel died in 1983 in London.

Pagel dealt mainly with research on tuberculosis, he turned to when he himself fell ill and it was at the Special Hospital for Tuberculosis Sommerfeld in the Havel country whose chief physician Helmuth Ulrici allowed him to experimental work in the hospital while recovering. He later returned as a pathologist at the hospital.

As a medical historian dealt in particular with Paracelsus, Johan Baptista van Helmont (whose rise to Artzney art he published new) and William Harvey.

The Medical Faculty of Heidelberg gave Pagel 1966, the honorary doctorate. In 1970 he was awarded the George Sarton Medal, the highest prestigious award for the History of Science, founded by George Sarton and Lawrence Joseph Henderson History of Science Society ( HSS). In 1969 he received the Dexter Award for his contributions to the history of medicine. For his tuberculosis research, he received the 1982 Robert Koch Medal.

Writings

History of Medicine

• Paracelsus. An introduction to philosophical medicine in the era of renaissance, New York, Karger 1958, 2nd edition 1982 ( German translation The medical world view of Paracelsus. His relationships with Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, Steiner 1962)
• William Harvey's biological ideas. Selected aspects and historical background, New York, Karger 1967
• The religious and philosophical aspects of van Helmont 's science and medicine, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1944
• New light on William Harvey, Karger 1976
• Johann Baptist van Helmont. Introduction to Philosophical Medicine of the baroque, Berlin, Springer Verlag 1930
• From Paracelsus to Van Helmont: studies in Renaissance medicine and science, London, 1986 ( editor Marianne Winder )
• Religion and neoplatonism in Renaissance medicine, London, 1985 ( editor Marianne Winder )
• Publisher Joseph Needham Background to Modern Science: ten lectures at Cambridge arranged by the history of Science Committee in 1936, Cambridge University Press 1938 ( lectures, among others, Arthur Eddington )

Medicine

• The general pathomorphological basis of tuberculosis, Berlin, Springer Verlag 1927