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The children from families of officers of the "Soviet forces temporarily stationed in the territory of the GDR" were treated on an in- and out-patient basis in East German paediatric clinics from 1945 to 1994. Since paediatric wards were not a regular component of military hospitals, newborns, infants and toddlers who became ill were sent to regional paediatric clinics for "special treatment" or in cases of emergency. This exception, regulated by law between the USSR and the GDR, required the approval of the garrison commander or the military doctor, though, in practice, this was circumvented. Linguistic problems could be resolved and no special rate of morbidity was observed in Russian children. Financing was arranged through contracts that had to be intricately negotiated when the Soviet troops were withdrawn after the German Reunification. Despite the heavily charged relationship historically between the inhabitants of East Germany and the occupying power imposed upon them, Russian children received good treatment and were tenderly cared for in the hospitals. Russian mothers impressively placed their unwavering trust in the nurses and physicians.

This paper examines the impact of the political system change after 1945 on the appointment of paediatric professorships in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR up until the time the Wall was built in 1961. It can be demonstrated that the political purge in the post-war period had only minor impact on the appointment of professorships and the National Socialist past no longer mattered after the conclusion of denazification. In 1957, the proportion of former NSDAP members among East German university professors of paediatrics was 100 per cent. When it came to new appointments, both members of the "bourgeois" academic non-professorial teaching staff from the GDR as well as paediatricians from West Germany, who had largely gained their scientifically qualifications under National Socialism, were in the running. A politically-controlled elite exchange did not take place until the construction of the Wall. State and party organs generally followed the personnel proposals of the universities since an insufficient number of qualified candidates was available for the systematic appointment of ,,progressive" paediatricians. Given the lack of staff, the SED personnel policy was aimed at the integration of previous elites, as long as they behaved loyally towards the new state. Since the East German faculties continued to make the questioning of the professionally competent professors in West Germany and East Germany the basis for their appointment lists, West German university paediatricians were able to exert considerable influence on the appointment of East German paediatric professorship until 1960s.

Professor Riehm was not only an excellent pediatric oncologist, but also an excellent hematologist. He was a mentor also for young scientists who were interested in hematological research as his/her main focus. In the 1970s he has promoted research in coagulation disorders, during 1980s he supported the investigation on hematopoetic growth factors. During the 1990 s he was one of the first in Europe who have used hematopoietic growth factors as a supportive therapy in the protocol ALL-BFM and has also helped to set up the International Registry for Severe Chronic Neutropenias [SCNIR] in his Department. The sense of the top research directions of the time distinguishes him not only as a pioneer of the leukaemia therapy studies, but also as a pioneer in hematology. He created the environment in which research could blossom., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

In 1987, in Cleveland County, United Kingdom, the pediatricians Marietta Higgs and Geoffrey Wyatt diagnosed 121 cases of child sexual abuse by using a hitherto little known diagnostic method. In large parts, this diagnosis proved wrong. This caused an ideological and political motivated media scandal, which framed British child care institutions as well as the relation of the public towards these institutions in the long-term. Historically, the intensity of this scandal can be traced to changes in the understanding of child care within the British system of child care. Using the method of historical discourse analysis, this paper will depict ideological structures of argumentation and locate them in ongoing processes of sociocultural change.

Who was responsible for the treatment of sick children in the countryside during the second half of the 19th century? This paper investigates the medical complaint accusing the rural population of only reluctantly bringing their sick offspring to academic physicians. The following analyses the role Franz v. Ottenthal (1818-1899), a 'representative' of a private rural medical practice, played in the specialised medical market attending to childhood diseases. An exemplary survey of Ottenthal's medical records for patients from the age of one to 14 years throughout the 1890s has shown that children contributed a relevant percentage of the whole of the physician's patient distribution. It may therefore be assumed that Ottenthal knew how to successfully merchandise his specific therapies. On the demand side, however, parents of sick children were not solely reliant upon this physician. Evidence from the medical records provides information as to when parents regarded medical self-help as no longer supporting the recovery of their children, the cures of lay healers failed, or cases when parents were not satisfied with the therapeutic treatments other physicians had to offer and therefore consulted Ottenthal.

Escherich was born on November 29, 1857 in Ansbach, Bavaria. He has been director of the children hospitals in Graz (Styria, Austria) from 1890 and Vienna (Austria) from 1902, started his bacteriological investigations in 1884 during a short stay in St. Anna Children Hospital in Vienna. This he continued it as an assistant in Munich and as clinic director in Graz. On the basis of his bacteriological findings in breast-milk, which proved to be sterile, he wanted to detect the physiological and pathogenetic role of the intestinal flora of breast-fed babies and of infants. In stained slides of meconium and milk-faeces he found cocci, bacilli with and without spores and yeasts. Among them he intensively investigated both the "Bacterium lactis aërogenes" (now: "Aerobacter aerogenes"), and the "Bacterium coli commune". In 1919, 8 years after his death, the name "Escherichia coli" was used for the first time and became the valid species name. This posthumous honour made Escherich worldwide known in the medical profession. Also for further enteric pathogens, the Campylobacter/Helicobacter group, which could not be cultured in Escherich's time he is looked upon as the first describer. In Graz and particularly in Vienna, Escherich's social-medical activities were concentrated on the baby and infant welfare. This was promoted by the construction of baby departments in hospitals, instructions of mothers, improvement of baby nutriments, and training of baby nurses and midwifes. The first great aim was the establishment of the "Reichsanstalt für Mutter- und Säuglingsfürsorge" (Imperial Institution for Mother and Baby Welfare) in Vienna which could come in action only during World War I in October 1915, thus 4 1/2 years after Escherich's death on February 15, 1911.

In the discourse on health, boys are emerging as a problem group. In contrast to girls who tended to be seen as fragile if not sickly, boys used to be thought of as strong and healthy. Gender-specific concepts stipulated much more exercise for boys, the masturbation discourse prevented a relaxed relationship to the own body. The paper first describes specific problems in the biography (babies, child labour, tuberculosis, school, fitness for military service) and their solutions up to the time of the Weimar Republic. During and after the two world wars school boys tended to be of poorer health than girls. The consequences of war affect the mental health of (half-) orphans gender-non-specifically up to the third generation. After 1945, attention to health concerns is rather restricted to the professional aptitude of mining trainees, health-related risk behaviour tends to be interpreted in terms of gender. Mothers sought medical advice slightly more frequently on behalf of boys up to puberty. Concerning the time between 1780 and 2010 inferior health is often noticeable in boys and male adolescents. This used to, and still does, apply to babies, child labour, industrial work and occupational accidents, conscription and direct consequences of war. It was mostly due to gender-specific separation of labour, but partly also to a higher risk preference. The gender-specific wider scope for exercise and sports up to the 1960s, in contrast, had a health-promoting effect.

The 7th of June 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the birthday of the American anaesthesiologist Virginia Apgar. The Apgar score for evaluation of the newborn created by her in 1952 and later named after her is one of the most popular and most often used medical scoring systems.

Coming from his clinical research in the field of infectiology and immunology the Viennese pediatrician Clemens von Pirquet (1874-1929) introduced the term "allergy" in 1906. With it he wanted to describe in general a change in reactivity of the organism, namely in time, quality and quantity. In contrast to the widely accepted use of the word "allergy" today, where it is restricted to specific immunologic hypersensitivity reactions against harmless foreign antigens, allergy in Pirquets sense comprised as general term likewise increases and decreases of the reactivity and so both "hyper-" and "hyposensitivity reactions". In the context with the expansion of allergy to the human predisposition Pirquet emphasized, that the change of reactivity does not only depend on exogenous substances (so called allergens), but also on endogenous factors of the organism itself. - The orientation towards the organism and his reactivity is the central idea, which can be found in the complete works of Pirquet from 1903 to 1929 and which is presented in this publication for the first time. It is the true essence of his theory of allergy.

Gertrud Soeken (1897-1978), paediatrician as well as psychiatrist and neurologist, was involved in National Socialist medicine through her practical and scientific work. She supported both National Socialist health care and ideology. This article confronts her activities in science and health care politics with the strategy of her denazification proceedings, which ended with her suspension as chief physician in Berlin-Buch. The relevance of the professional network on which she was able to rely is particularly discussed.

In the research of the history of medicine there has been little regard to children as patients. In this paper my focus is especially on children who were put in the "Kinderfachabteilung" (Children Special Department) of the Bavarian State Hospital of Kaufbeuren-Irsee. This is one of three "Kinderfachabteilungen" (Children Special Departments) in Bavaria and one of about thirty in the "Deutsches Reich". During the period of National Socialism these children were (de)classified as "lebensunwertes Leben" (life of not worth living) and as such were admitted to these units. They became victims of the systematically conducted child euthanasia. There has been the attempt to eliminate them as silent as possible. In the beginning I will concentrate on the development of the institutional history of the children's medical care in Kaufbeuren-Irsee. It will be presented the care of children from beginning to end (1940-1966). An analysis of the historical sources, a survey of children's patient records give deep insights into the children's fates. The emphasis will be on the "Kinderfachabteilung" (Children Special Department) Kaufbeuren-Irsee in which 221 children died from 1941 to 1945.

Since Philippe Ariès' History of Childhood scholars have been interested in the history of the sick child in the Early Modern Period. This paper adds one more case study to the current research. It analyses sources connected with the physician and surgeon Lorenz Heister: his handbooks on surgery (1719) and medicine (1744) on the one hand, which reflect the respective therapeutic ideal, and his consultation letters on the other hand, which enable us to have a closer look at Heister's therapeutic practice. It can be shown, albeit with the exception of the lower social classes, that in the case of illness it depended not so much on the age of the sick person than the "style" of the family concerned if expert advice was sought or not. Only one feature depended on age: with the young patients-by-post "surgical" diseases were more common than with adults. It seems that the surgeon's diagnosis "from outside" fitted better to the small patients than the physician's anamnesis-based proceeding.

This article deals with the biography of Werner Catel, a German paediatrician and protagonist of the Nazi programme for "euthanasia of children". Based on original research into recently discovered source materials, two aspects of Catel's life are considered. Firstly, Catel's attitude towards "euthanasia" is analysed. This analysis is not limited to the period of National Socialism, but focuses also on the phase before 1933 and especially on the era after 1945. Secondly, the authors explore Catel's academic career. What effects on his career in the later Federal Republic of Germany had his exposed role in the Nazi programme for "euthanasia of children"? In this context it is also examined how the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel/Germany, which employed Catel until 1960 in a leading position, judged the work of its former professor after his death.

The history of paediatric surgery in Vienna has not been clearly documented so far, especially its development during the second half of the nineteenth century. Josef Weinlechner (1829-1906) is one of the outstanding paediatric surgeons in Vienna during this time. We present an overview of his biography, his position as head of the department of surgery at the St. Anna Children's Hospital, and also discuss his publications concerning various aspects of paediatric surgery. Of particular interest was the discovery of his application for the qualification of a postdoctoral lecturer ("Habilitation") in the archives of the University of Vienna. In this application, Weinlechner refers to his specialisation as that of a paediatric surgeon.

The article summarizes the first results of an attempt to reconstruct the destinies of the Jewish pediatricians of Vienna after the German occupation of Austria in March 1938. Traditionally pediatrics in Vienna were characterized by a high percentage of Jewish specialists. In 1938 they were confronted with abrupt humiliations and persecutions by the sudden introduction of the Nazi racial laws. The paper describes the foregoing, developments in Germany since 1933 and analyses the fates of 96 pediatric specialists of Vienna, who were affected by these events.