Three Australian Vignettes about Professor Otfrid Foerster, Neurosurgeon of Breslau (Wrocław)

Abstract

Abstract: We document three Australian responses to the work of Otfrid Foerster. The first comes from the expatriate neurosurgeon Sir Hugh Cairns, who visited Foerster in Breslau (Wrocław) and was one of Foerster's obituarists. The second is from a medical practitioner and anatomist Dr Toby Arnold, who never met Foerster but was provoked to anger by the methods Foerster used to map dermatomes yet felt unable to complain. The third is from an Australian patient, who in 1928 underwent neurosurgery by Foerster with the ordeal being published on the front page of a Sydney newspaper. The contrast is interesting because while the medical profession generally ignored Foerster's conduct, that same conduct was the subject of unfavourable publicity. Did the medical profession exempt itself from common moral standards?