Hermann von Schrötter
Encyclopedia
Anton Hermann Victor Thomas Schrötter, name sometimes referred to as Hermann Schrötter von Kristelli (5 August 1870 - 6 January 1928) was an Austrian physiologist and physician who was a native of Vienna
. He was the son of laryngologist
Leopold von Schrötter
(1837–1908), and grandson to chemist
Anton Schrötter von Kristelli
(1802–1875).
He studied medicine and natural sciences at the Universities of Vienna
and Strasbourg
, and in 1894 earned his medical degree, and during the following year received his doctorate of philosophy. Afterwards he worked under Carl Gussenbauer
(1842–1903) at the University Hospital in Vienna and was an assistant to his father at the clinic of internal medicine
. In the mid-1890s with physiologist Nathan Zuntz
(1847–1920) and others, he began investigations involving physiological effects on the body associated with air pressure and altitude change, and in 1896 made the first in a series of several high-altitude balloon ascents.
In 1910 Schrötter accompanied scientists Nathan Zuntz
, Arnold Durig
(1872–1961) and Joseph Barcroft
(1872–1947) on an expedition to Tenerife
where he performed research involving respiration and oxygenation
at higher elevations. During the Balkan Wars
of 1912-13 he worked with the Red Cross in Montenegro
, and afterwards served as a physician during World War I
, which included a stint as Sanitätschef in Jerusalem. After the war he was director of Malariaspitals in Wieselburg
, and following his discharge from military service, he was in charge of the Alland
Lungenheilanstalt (lung hospital), which was founded by his father in 1898. In the 1920s, he made balneological studies of the Dead Sea
, and in 1925 was habilitated for internal medicine
at the University of Vienna.
Schrötter was a pioneer of aviation
and hyperbaric medicine, and made important contributions in the study of decompression sickness
. In 1906, Schrötter suggested the use of oxygen with recompression but concerns over oxygen toxicity
kept the suggestion from becoming the standard practice it is today. He was interested in the physiological effects that divers experienced when ascending from ocean depths, as well as the effects that higher altitudes placed upon balloonists and mountain climbers. On 31 July 1901 meteorologists Arthur Berson
(1859–1942) and Reinhard Süring
(1866–1950) aboard the balloon Preussen, and equipped with portable compressed oxygen containers, were able to reach 10,800 meters above sea level. However, at 10,000 meters the two scientists succumbed to unconsciousness, and from this experiment Schrötter realized that even 100% oxygen would be an insufficient safeguard against hypoxia
at very high altitudes. He recognized that special pressurized breathing equipment would be necessary to maintain sufficient blood oxygenation, and proposed using a pressurized sealed chamber for very high altitude balloon flights.
Schrötter did extensive research involving pulmonary tuberculosis, and was a pioneer of bronchoscopy
. In 1905 with Adolf Loewy
(1862–1937), he was the first to use an endobronchial
catheter
as an instrument for airway separation in humans.
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He was the son of laryngologist
Laryngology
Laryngology is that branch of medicine which deals with disorders, diseases and injuries of the vocal apparatus, especially the larynx. Common conditions addressed by laryngologists include vocal fold nodules and cysts, laryngeal cancer, spasmodic dysphonia, laryngopharyngeal reflux, papillomas,...
Leopold von Schrötter
Leopold von Schrötter
Leopold Schrötter Ritter von Kristelli, was an Austrian internist and laryngologist born in Graz...
(1837–1908), and grandson to chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
Anton Schrötter von Kristelli
Anton Schrötter von Kristelli
Anton Schrötter von Kristelli was an Austrian chemist and mineralogist born in Olomouc, Moravia. His son Leopold Schrötter Ritter von Kristelli was a noted laryngologist.Antons father was an apothecary...
(1802–1875).
He studied medicine and natural sciences at the Universities of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
and Strasbourg
University of Strasbourg
The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....
, and in 1894 earned his medical degree, and during the following year received his doctorate of philosophy. Afterwards he worked under Carl Gussenbauer
Carl Gussenbauer
Carl Gussenbauer was an Austrian surgeon who was a native of Obervellach. He received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1867, and was later a professor in Liège, Prague and Vienna...
(1842–1903) at the University Hospital in Vienna and was an assistant to his father at the clinic of internal medicine
Internal medicine
Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
. In the mid-1890s with physiologist Nathan Zuntz
Nathan Zuntz
Nathan Zuntz was a German physiologist born in Bonn. He was a pioneer of modern altitude physiology and aviation medicine.- Academic career :...
(1847–1920) and others, he began investigations involving physiological effects on the body associated with air pressure and altitude change, and in 1896 made the first in a series of several high-altitude balloon ascents.
In 1910 Schrötter accompanied scientists Nathan Zuntz
Nathan Zuntz
Nathan Zuntz was a German physiologist born in Bonn. He was a pioneer of modern altitude physiology and aviation medicine.- Academic career :...
, Arnold Durig
Arnold Durig
Arnold Durig was an Austrian physiologist. He very probably served as the model for the "impartial person" in Sigmund Freud's polemic booklet The Question of Lay Analysis: Conversations with an Impartial Person ....
(1872–1961) and Joseph Barcroft
Joseph Barcroft
Sir Joseph Barcroft CBE, FRS was a British physiologist best known for his studies of the oxygenation of blood....
(1872–1947) on an expedition to Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
where he performed research involving respiration and oxygenation
Oxygenation (medical)
Oxygenation occurs when oxygen molecules enter the tissues of the body. For example, blood is oxygenated in the lungs, where oxygen molecules travel from the air and into the blood...
at higher elevations. During the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
of 1912-13 he worked with the Red Cross in Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, and afterwards served as a physician during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, which included a stint as Sanitätschef in Jerusalem. After the war he was director of Malariaspitals in Wieselburg
Wieselburg
Wieselburg is a town in Lower Austria, Austria, located near the River Erlauf. Its name roughly translates to castle where two rivers meet, as there are two rivers that run together to create the Erlauf...
, and following his discharge from military service, he was in charge of the Alland
Alland
Alland is a town in the district of Baden in Lower Austria in Austria. It is about 20 km southwest of Vienna and is one of the many towns in Lower Austria located in the Wienerwald.-History:...
Lungenheilanstalt (lung hospital), which was founded by his father in 1898. In the 1920s, he made balneological studies of the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
, and in 1925 was habilitated for internal medicine
Internal medicine
Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
at the University of Vienna.
Aviation medicine
Aviation medicine, also called flight medicine or aerospace medicine, is a preventive or occupational medicine in which the patients/subjects are pilots, aircrews, or persons involved in spaceflight...
and hyperbaric medicine, and made important contributions in the study of decompression sickness
Decompression sickness
Decompression sickness describes a condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization...
. In 1906, Schrötter suggested the use of oxygen with recompression but concerns over oxygen toxicity
Oxygen toxicity
Oxygen toxicity is a condition resulting from the harmful effects of breathing molecular oxygen at elevated partial pressures. It is also known as oxygen toxicity syndrome, oxygen intoxication, and oxygen poisoning...
kept the suggestion from becoming the standard practice it is today. He was interested in the physiological effects that divers experienced when ascending from ocean depths, as well as the effects that higher altitudes placed upon balloonists and mountain climbers. On 31 July 1901 meteorologists Arthur Berson
Arthur Berson
Arthur Josef Stanislaus Berson was a Polish meteorologist and pioneer of aerology who was a native of Neu Sandez, Galicia ....
(1859–1942) and Reinhard Süring
Reinhard Süring
Reinhard Süring was a German meteorologist who was a native of Hamburg. He died in Potsdam, East Germany on 29 December 1950....
(1866–1950) aboard the balloon Preussen, and equipped with portable compressed oxygen containers, were able to reach 10,800 meters above sea level. However, at 10,000 meters the two scientists succumbed to unconsciousness, and from this experiment Schrötter realized that even 100% oxygen would be an insufficient safeguard against hypoxia
Hypoxia (medical)
Hypoxia, or hypoxiation, is a pathological condition in which the body as a whole or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply. Variations in arterial oxygen concentrations can be part of the normal physiology, for example, during strenuous physical exercise...
at very high altitudes. He recognized that special pressurized breathing equipment would be necessary to maintain sufficient blood oxygenation, and proposed using a pressurized sealed chamber for very high altitude balloon flights.
Schrötter did extensive research involving pulmonary tuberculosis, and was a pioneer of bronchoscopy
Bronchoscopy
Bronchoscopy is a technique of visualizing the inside of the airways for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. An instrument is inserted into the airways, usually through the nose or mouth, or occasionally through a tracheostomy. This allows the practitioner to examine the patient's airways for...
. In 1905 with Adolf Loewy
Adolf Loewy
Adolf Loewy ; was a German physiologist who was a native of Berlin.He studied medicine in Vienna and Berlin, where in 1885 he received his medical doctorate. Later he was an assistant to Nathan Zuntz at the Landwirtschaftlichen Hochschule in Berlin...
(1862–1937), he was the first to use an endobronchial
Endobronchial valve
An endobronchial valve is an implantable medical device--a small, one-way valve, which is implanted in an airway in the pulmonary system to treat one of several lung conditions...
catheter
Catheter
In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Catheters thereby allow drainage, administration of fluids or gases, or access by surgical instruments. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization...
as an instrument for airway separation in humans.
Selected written works
- Beobachtungen über physiologische Veränderungen der Stimme und des Gehörs bei Änderung des Luftdruckes (Observations on physiological changes in voice and hearing due to changes of air pressure), with Richard Heller and William Mager, (1897)
- Zur Kenntnis der Bergkrankheit (Knowledge of Mountain Sickness); (1899)
- Luftdruckerkrankungen. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der sogenannten Caissonkrankheit (Air pressure disorders. With particular reference to Decompression Illness), with Richard Heller and William Mager, (1900)
- Ueber eine seltene Ursache einseitiger Recurrenslähmung, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Symptomatologie und Diagnose des offenen Ductus Botalli (1901)
- Ergebnisse zweier Ballonfahrten zu physiologischen Zwecken (Results of two Balloon Experiments for Physiological Purposes) with Nathan Zuntz, (1902)
- Untersuchungen über Blutcirculation beim Menschen (Blood Circulation Studies on Humans); with Adolf Loewy (1905)
- Klinik der Bronchoskopie (Hospital Broncoscopy), (1906)
- Hygiene der Aeronautik und Aviatik (Hygiene of Aeronautics and Aviation); (1912)
- Vorträge über Tuberkulose für Ärzte (Lectures for Physicians about Tuberculosis), (1913)
- Skizzen eines Feldarztes aus Montenegro (Sketches of a Field Doctor at Montenegro), (1913)
- Das Tote Meer. Beitrag zur physikalischen Geographie und Balneologie mit Bemerkungen zur Flora der Ufergelände (The Dead Sea; Contribution to the Physical Geography and Balneology with comments on the Flora of the Shore Area), (1924)
- Über den Energieverbrauch bei musikalischer Betätigung (Excess Energy Consumption in Musical Activity), with Adolf Loewy (1926)