Julius Wagner-JaureggBorn 7 Mar 1857; died 27 Sep 1940 at age 83.Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist whose made the first use of a shock therapy. He investigated the connections between thyroid function, goitre and cretinism. On his advice the Government, some time later, started selling salt with added iodine, in the areas most affected by goitre. His main life's work built on an earlier observation that certain nervous disorders improved in patients who had caught a fever-inducing illness. He applied this in the treatment of syphilitic meningoencephalitis, or general paresis, by deliberately inducing malaria (chosen because it could be controlled with quinine). The method brought a previously incurable fatal disease under medical control and earned him the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. |
