Adalbert Czerny

Adalbert Czerny ( born March 25, 1863 in Jaworzno, Empire of Austria, now Poland, † October 3, 1941 in Berlin) was a pediatrician and professor (Secret Medical Adviser, Prof. Dr., Ph.D. hc. ). He founded the International Paediatric school at the Charité in Berlin and is considered one of the founders of modern pediatrics. Several children's diseases were named after him.

Education and career

The son of a railway engineer, was born in the district Szczakowa in the then Galician city Jaworzno and grew up in Vienna and since 1879 in Pilsen. There he made the 1882 High School and then studied at the German University in Prague medicine. There he became a member of the fraternity Carolina Prague. After receiving his doctorate in 1888, he worked as an assistant to Alois Epstein ( 1849-1918 ) on the members of the Prague University Children's Hospital Foundling. In 1893 he habilitated with a written thesis to knowledge of the glycogenic and amyloid degeneration and treated in Habilitationsvortrag already a topic of his later work area of ​​Paediatrics: The diet of the infant due to the physiological function of his stomach. The medical world became aware of Czerny, and already in the same year, he was courted by the Universities of Innsbruck and Wroclaw. He chose Wroclaw, where he worked first as an associate professor and since 1906, after he had rejected a call to Munich, as a personal professor.

In 1910, Czerny a reputation as a professor of pediatrics at the newly built children's hospital in Strasbourg and joined a little later (1913 ) as the successor Otto Heubner at the Berlin University Hospital Charité, where he remained until his retirement in 1932. As an emeritus he took over 71 years to a professorship at the Medical Academy in Dusseldorf, where he as acting head of its children's hospital from 1934 to 1936.

Czerny married in 1895 in Breslau Martha Saviour ( 1874-1967 ). Her son Marianus Czerny (1896-1985), Dr. phil., Dr. rer. nat. hc, was 1938-1961 Professor of Experimental Physics in Frankfurt am Main.

Adalbert Czerny died on October 3, 1941 in Berlin and found his final resting place in Pilsen.

Importance as the founders of modern pediatrics

The school founded by Czerny dealt primarily with the nutritional physiology and the metabolic pathology of the infant. During his tenure at the Berlin University Children's Hospital, he continued the partially begun by Otto Heubner research on infant mortality and put it on a scientific basis. Together with his student and collaborator Arthur Keller (1868-1934) summarized the results Czerny in his Breslau in 1906 in the two-volume work The child's diet, nutritional disorders, and nutritional therapy - in professional circles simply as the " Czerny- Keller" familiar - together; more releases followed in 1917 and 1928.

This manual has the nutrition in pediatrics and thus the development of paediatrics up to the present time fundamentally determined. The term eating disorder, he used pointed to the link between diet and disease. Czerny distinguished the three groups of diet-related, the infection- related and the constitution -related harm.

A second focus of his research was the relationship between eating disorders and the behavior of the child. His lecture repeatedly reissued collection of 1908, the physician as an educator, already in the work title shows this approach. However, his attitude was marked to parents of confidence.

Discovery of new diseases in children

Several teething wear Czerny's name:

• The alimentary infant anemia ( anemia Czerny )
• The ( lymphatic ) - exudative diathesis ( Czerny- diathesis ), a disease that Czerny clear boundaries of the previously known scrofula and thus also of tuberculosis. It is an individual investment for increased sensitivity of the skin and mucosa.
• The paradoxical breathing ( Czerny phenomenon or breathing )

Tributes and posthumous honors

Founded in 1883 German Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine ( DGKJ ) donated since 1963 ( the 100th birth year of Czerny ) every year the Adalbert- Czerny Prize. The prize is awarded for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of pediatrics. Czerny in 1923 was its chairman.

Bibliography (selection)

• Adalbert Czerny, Arthur Keller: The child's diet, nutritional disorders, and nutritional therapy: 2 vols last edition, Deuticke, Leipzig 1928.
• Adalbert Czerny: The physician as an educator of the child, 6th edition, Deuticke, Leipzig 1922.
• Adalbert Czerny: The origin and significance of fear in the life of the child, Langensalza 1915.