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When starting a blog about books, it needs a meaningful beginning. The letter A, the first in the alphabet, suggests itself. A also stands for Angetter-Pfeiffer, Daniela – winner of the Science Book 2024 in the “Medicine/Biology” category. She convinced with “When stupidity killed research”. That's not enough. She had already published the book “Thank Pandemic!” in 2022. won. The publisher, Amalthea, contributes the third A. AAA, with the triple we should congratulate and take a closer look.
Everyone has personal stereotypes and their own experiences with doctors. Here romantic clichés on TV á la Bergdoktor, there overcrowded waiting rooms, unbearably long waiting times for doctor's appointments. Medicine polarizes. Looking back historically, big names like Van Swieten, Billroth and Rokitansky appear. Nobel Prize winners are also worth mentioning.
Daniela Angetter-Pfeiffer, a doctoral historian with expertise in the history of science, takes up this hot mix of topics. While she worked at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Vienna around the turn of the millennium, she has been at the Academy of Sciences at the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage since 2001 with a research focus on Viennese medicine from 1848 to 1955. She is dealing with the 100 most exciting years in medical history. In addition to her scientific expertise, as an emergency paramedic at the Red Cross in Schwechat, she also has the necessary access to practice.
Back to the mix of topics or to “Shadows and Light in Austrian Medical History,” is the title of the introduction to her latest book.
The introduction reads like a summary, a summary of the highlights that follow in the next eleven chapters, starting with "Maria Theresa's personal and court physicians" through to "Scorned Noble Stars". Andreas von Stifft, personal physician to Emperor Franz II (I), who allowed greats like Joseph Gall (founder of the skull theory) to fail and also banned homeopathy, becomes the "bullying emperor". Van Swieten had to fight against the outdated theories of the Jesuits and we learn from Lorenz Böhler that he "had to obtain patients illegally several times in order to prove that his newfangled technique for treating bone fractures was effective" (p. 15).
Of course, the role of women, who have always had a much more difficult time in local medical history, is also duly acknowledged. It was not until 1903 that Margarete Hilferding-Hönigsberg received the first medical doctorate in Vienna and until 1920 women had to be single to get a job in Vienna hospitals.
The time window from the 18th to the 21st century, the scope of the book, is a consistently exciting journey through time with the fates, triumphs and defeats of well-known and also lesser-known doctors. Ups and downs, colorfully mixed with little-known details. Did you know that the inventor of percussion, Leopold Augenbrugger (1722 to 1809), was not only Joseph Haydn's friend but also his best man and even wrote opera texts for him? No wonder that an enthusiastic readership pushed the book from the science book shortlist to number 1 for 2024.
Her previous book, “Thank Pandemic!” (2021), has the subtitle “What epidemics moved in Austria”, the introduction reads similarly “How epidemics moved Austria”, adding when and who. The where is already defined with Austria. The when, the time frame of the book, which was published during the corona pandemic in September 2021 (second edition February 2022), begins in baroque Vienna. Figuratively speaking, with a full-page illustration (p. 19) of the plague column on Graben in the historic center of Vienna. Under the who could be a list of diseases, plagues, epidemics and pandemics that no one wants to have. It starts with the Black Death, the plague, then the cholera that raged in the 19th century, tuberculosis, the Spanish flu, foot and mouth disease and finally Corona.
It may sound macabre if you ask about "lessons learned" in view of the diseases mentioned above, which claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. But lessons were also learned from every pandemic. A recent benefit that we no longer want to do without is the e-prescription. Before the corona pandemic it would have been unthinkable, today it is as commonplace as the Vienna high spring water pipeline opened in 1873. You can read it from page 159 in the chapter “Cholera and the construction of the first high spring water pipeline”.
In the 19th century, Vienna had a double water problem: a sewage problem and a drinking water problem. Floods such as those in March 1830 led to the contamination of domestic wells and the spread of typhoid and cholera. The construction of the cholera canals along the Vienna River, which Emperor Franz I personally supervised, solved the sewage problem. The extraction of pure karst water from the Alps via the high spring water pipe led to the end of the epidemics.
A look at the book's contents takes us to Ignaz Semmelweis, the "savior of mothers" (p. 126), as well as to the Vienna Health Department, whose establishment was a consequence of the Spanish flu in 1918 (p. 204). There was already a lockdown back then. Visiting cinemas, theaters, cafés, restaurants and horse racing was prohibited. Football games took place in front of empty stands - images that are still fresh in our memories and that we no longer want.
Conclusion: The author knows how to convey topics that are close to us in a competent and exciting way, like a crime novel. More medical (history) like this please! (Thomas Hofmann, March 18, 2024)