Joseph Seifert, veteriarian at the imperial court in Austria, a forgotten pioneer in veterinary anaesthesia in Vienna

Publikationen als Autor:in / Herausgeber:in der Vetmeduni

Moens, Yves

Abstrakt

Joseph Seifert was born in 1798 in Steinamanger (Szombathely, Hungary). He completed studies in human and veterinary medicine in Vienna. In 1835 he was appointed Veterinarian to the Imperial Court and became responsible for the Imperial Stables. Here, Seifert was among, if not the first veterinarian on the continent to administer di-ethyl ether (and later chloroform) by inhalation to horses. This was only about 6 weeks after news reached London (on 17th December 1846) that ether inhalation had demonstrably rendered surgery painless in a human patient at the Massachusetts General Hospital on the 16th October 1846. The results of pilot trials in January 1847 encouraged him to organize public demonstrations of ether anaesthesia on animals in the Imperial Stables on the 5th, 6th and 9th of February when he performed various surgical interventions on anaesthetized horses, ruminants and pets, using his own specifically developed equipment. The rectal route of administration was also demonstrated but was unsuccessful. He reported his clinical observations of ether's effects at different doses and the physico-chemical methods he used to prove the presence of ether in blood, milk and meat. These reports, and his profound appreciation of the new method were published in Austrian medical journals. Seifert considered ether anaesthesia a unique and major breakthrough in animal welfare because it allowed surgery without inflicting pain. He also recognised it was a major contributor to the veterinarian's and his assistants' safety as it made animal restraint ublichen jahrlichen Operationen an den Pferden und kann so als europaischer Vorreiter auf dem Gebiet dar- gestellt werden. Trotzdem werden J. Seifert und seine Leistung in der modernen historischen Literatur kaum erwahnt. Joseph Seifert verstarb im Jahr 1854 in Wien.

Dokumententyp

Originalarbeit

Open Access Type

Diamond

DOI

10.5680/wtm000030

Repository Phaidra

o:4414