Wagner-Jauregg, Julius#
b. Wels (Upper Austria), March 7, 1857, d. Vienna, Sept. 27, 1940, psychologist, founder of fever therapy, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927. From 1889 University Professor of Psychiatry in Graz, 1893-1928 in Vienna, head of the psychiatric hospitals "Erste Wiener Psychiatrische Klinik" and, from 1902, "Zweite Wiener Psychiatrische Klinik", which joined in 1905 to form the "Klinik fuer Psychiatrie und Neuropathologie Am Steinhof". Discovered a temporary improvement in the conditions of incurable mental illnesses after the patients had suffered from diseases marked by fever. Research on this subject became his life work. 1887 published a paper on fever therapy. 1927 awarded the Nobel Prize for "the discovery of the therapeutic significance of malaria vaccine in the case of progressive paralysis". Since more efficient treatments with antibiotics were discovered soon after, his discovery was of only historical value after the 1940s.
Another of his areas of research, however, the treatment of thyroid
disfunctions (prophylaxis against goitre and cretinism with iodised
salt), was of great socio-medical significance. Gained acclaim also
for his theory of the hereditary character of illness, forensic
psychiatry, the expansion of somatic symptomatology and the
pathogenesis of many psychoses.
Works#
Ursprung und Funktion der beschleunigenden Herznerven, 1878; Ueber die Einwirkung fieberhafter Erkrankungen auf Psychosen, 1887; Beitraege zur Aetiologie und Pathologie des endemischen Kretinismus, 1910; Myxoedem und Kretinismus, 1912; Lehrbuch der Organotherapie, 1914 (with G. Bayer); Verhuetung und Behandlung progressiver Paralyse durch Impfmalaria, 1931; Mechanismus der Wirkung der Infektions- und Fiebertherapie, 1935; Ueber die menschliche Lebensdauer, 1941; Lebenserinnerungen, edited and expanded by L Schoenbauer and M. Jantsch, 1950.Literature#
E. Lesky, Die Wr. Medizinische Schule im 19. Jahrhundert, 21978.