Ludwik Hirszfeld

Ludwik Hirszfeld (August 5th 1884 - March 7th 1954). Microbiologist and serologist Polish which one regards as one of the Co-discoverers of the Système ABO. It created a laboratory of Medical research at the Institute of State d' Hygiène in Poland little time after the First World War. In 1946, it published its autobiography, Histoire of a Life .

Biography

After having finished its studies with the college of Łódź, Hirszfeld, having been born in an Jewish family and convert later with Catholicism, decided to study medicine in Germany. In 1902 it entered to the Université of Wurzbourg and in 1904 to that of Berlin, where it followed courses in medicine and philosophy. Its thesis of doctorate, Über Blutagglutination (1907), was the first step towards what was to become its speciality. It started by becoming assistant at the Institute of Heidelberg for Experimental Research on cancer, under the direction of E. von Dungern of which he became a large friend, which was scientifically to bear fruits. In Heidelberg they completed their first common work on the blood groups in the animal and at the man who, in 1900, had been identified like isoagglutinines by Karl Landsteiner.

Having found little by little that the work conditions with Heidelberg were limited too much and being familiarized completely with the field of hygiene and microbiology, it accepted in 1911 a station of assistant at the Institute of Hygiene of the University of Zurich, just after its marriage. His wife, it also doctor, became assistant with the pediatric Private clinic of Zurich under the direction of Emil Feer.

In 1914 Hirszfeld became academic reader on the basis of its work the anaphylaxie and the anaphylatoxine and their relationship with coagulation ; it was also named “Privatdocent”. When the First World War burst Serbia was devastated by epidemics of typhus and bacillar dysentery. In 1915 Hirszfeld required to work there and remained with the Serb army until the end of the war, exerting the functions of advising in serology and bacteriology. It that at the hospital for contagious diseases of Salonique he discovered the bacillus Salmonella paratyphi C, today is at that time named Salmonella hirszfeldi .

After the end of the Hirszfeld war and its wife returned to Warsaw, where it created a Polish institute serologic on the model of the Ehrlich Institute for the Experimental Therapy in Frankfurt. He became soon assistant editor in charge of the scientific research at the Institute of Hygiene of Warsaw and, in 1924, was named there professor. In 1931 it was called as full professor at the University of Warsaw and took part at many international committees. After the occupation of Poland by the German army Hirszfeld was dislocated of its functions at the Institute of Hygiene like “not-Aryan”; protection enabled him to continue its scientific work at his place until February 1941, but it was practically impossible for him to publish.

February 20th 1941 Hirszfeld was forced to settle in the Ghetto of Warsaw with his wife and her daughter. It organized there antiepidemic measurements and vaccination campaigns against typhus and the typhoid one, at the same time as it gave courses of medicine in secrecy. In 1943 with its family it succeeds in fleeing of the ghetto and they managed to survive hidden under false names and changing hiding-place without stop; the same year his/her daughter died of tuberculosis.

When part of Poland was released in 1944, Hirszfeld took part immediately in the creation of the University of Lublin of which he became the prorector. In 1945 he became director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology in Wrocław and senior of the medical college. Until its death he taught at the Institute, now affiliated to the Polish Academy of Sciences and which took its name.

Hirszfeld received many honors, including honorary doctorates of the universities of Prague (1950) and Zurich (1951). He wrote almost 400 French, German work, in English and Polish, a great number in collaboration with other famous researchers and much with his wife.

It is in Hirszfeld and von Dungern that names are owed has, B, AB and O for the blood groups; previously one spoke about groups I, II, III and IV. He proposed designations has and B because of the agglutinins. In 1910-1911 he discovered the heredity of the blood groups, discovered which made it possible to establish the exclusion of paternity by serology. During the First World War he wrote with his wife of work on séro-anthropology, at the origin of the fundamental conclusions on the composition of the human races present and last. According to its theory of the blood groups known as of the Pleiads, the other groups probably developed during the evolution starting from the group the O, most antiquated.

Hirszfeld was the first to be envisaged between the mother and the child the conflict serologic which the discovery of the Rhesus factor confirmed. On this basis it developed, in the last years of its life, an “allergic” theory of the abortions and recommended the therapy by the antihistamines. Hirszfeld also inquired into the Tumeur S and the serology of the Tuberculose. Its discovery of the infectious agent of the fever paratyphoid a.c. have important consequences for the differential Diagnosis.

In 1914, in collaboration with R. Klinger, Hirszfeld developed a serodiagnostic test of reaction for the Syphilis, which however did not replace the test of Wasserman going back to 1906. Its studies on the Goiter, endemic in certain Swiss areas, involved a very sharp debate with E. Bircher on the theory - largely confirmed today - which these goiters endemic are caused by the lack of iodine in water and the food, contrary with the hydrotelluric theory.

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