German Surgeon known for Sterilization of Surgical Instruments
Monday, May 24, 2010
Intrudoction to the Surgical Environment
Instructor: Javier Espinales
Paper Written by: Walter Pacheco
My Paper is about a Baltic- German surgeon named, Ernst Von Bergmann.
Dr. Bergmann was Born on December 1836 Riga, Russian Baltic Provinces. He is known as the first surgeon to use heat to sterilize surgical instruments. Dr. Bergmann came from a religious family. His father was a Lutheran Pastor in Rujen, Livonia. His mother was a refugee from an epidemic in Riga, thus Ernst Von Bergmann being born in the city where his mother was a refugee.
Ernst Von Bergmann tried to enter the Theological faculty,trying to follow his father’s steps but The Czar did not give him permission, so he signed up with the medical faculty of the Germano-Russian University of Dorpat in 1854. Six years later he graduated. He visited Hospitals for the following three years, learning and finally he settled down in Dorpat as a Clinical Assistant. Three years later he volunteered to the Prussian and Austrian war where he continued to learn all things surgery. The war gave him invaluable knowledge in the surgery field. After the war, Dr. Bergmann went back to Dorpat. Later, he went on becoming what the Germans call: Chef-Artz in different base hospitals during the Franco-German War of 1870-1871. Later on the same year, he became a proffessor of surgery in Dorpat.
In the spring of 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey and guess where Dr. Bergmann went? He offered his expertice and became a surgent consultant to the Army. This war gave him the opportunity to treat the wounded under better conditions all due to the Baltic Hospital of the Red Cross where he adopted Lister’s antiseptic methods for the first time. Thus amputation became impractical due to the wider maneuvers of war. Ernst Von Bergmann had written about the impracticalities of amputation and with Lister’s antiseptic