Ludwig Guttmann, 3 July 1899 - 18 March 1980

Abstract

Ludwig Guttmann was born on 3 July 1899 in Tost, Upper Silesia, which was then in Poland. His father was an innkeeper and distiller, who with Ludwig’s elder sister and her husband all perished in Auschwitz. Both Ludwig’s grandfathers were farmers, and he spent many holidays in the country on his grandfather’s farm where he watched his grandmother dispense herbal remedies to the country people. He was brought up in the Jewish faith, but early rebelled against ‘meaningless forms of orthodoxy’. He went to school at Konigshütte, a coal mining town of 70 000 inhabitants. While awaiting call-up at the age of 17 he became an orderly at the local accident hospital. Here he saw a miner who had broken his back have the deformity reduced by extension and direct pressure, a manoeuvre recommended by Galen. He was told not to write case notes, ‘as he will be dead in a few weeks’, and this defeatist attitude deeply impressed him (Ross & Harris 1980). In later life he found familiarity with the duties and ways of medical orderlies very valuable. He picked up from a patient a severe throat infection which was followed by a sub- thyroid abscess and drainage tube. When he was called up in 1917 with the abscess drainage tube still in place he was rejected for military service and began medical studies at Breslau. He recovered his health, was passed fit for service with the artillery, but when he was again called up on 9 November 1918, he was, not surprisingly, sent home.