Academic Medicine during the Nazi Period: The Implications for Creating Awareness of Professional Responsibility Today

Abstract

In the mid-1930s, a young physician from Louisiana by the name of Michael DeBakey began a period of surgical training in Europe. After studying vascular surgery in France, he moved to Germany to continue his surgical studies with Professor Martin Kirschner at the University of Heidelberg.¹ Heidelberg was, at that time, recognized as a center for outstanding surgical training. Young DeBakey was following a decades old tradition whereby North American physicians traveled to the birthplace of modern scientific medicine—Europe.² It was the German-language universities that gave birth to many of the major discoveries and developments that have formed the foundation of modern medicine and medical science. DeBakey s European quest followed in the footsteps of such eminent physicians as the clinician William Osier, the pathologist William Welch, and the surgeon William Halsted. The period that saw an eruption in knowledge and technology in clinical and basic science also witnessed the parallel development of eugenics and scientific racism, which were also considered legitimate scholarly and scientific endeavors.