FORSSMANN, WERNER. 1904-1979.


Die Sondierung des Rechten Herzens. [In:] Klinische Wochenschrift, volume 8, number 2, pp 2085-2087 and 2287 (supplement), Berlin: Julius Springer, 1929. 4to. Illustrated with halftone photographic prints. Contemporary half calf and marbled boards. Wear, corners bumped, light browning to margins. WITH: Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift, volume 29, number 32, Berlin, August 1912. 4to. Later patterned boards, spine gilt. Includes BLEICHROEDER, FRITZ, Intraarterielle Therapie, UNGER, ERNST, Bemerkungen zur intraarteriellen therapie, and LOEB, WALTER, Bemerkungen zur intraarteriellen therapie, pp 1503-1505. FIRST EDITION. Werner Forssmann shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andre Cournand and Dickinson Richards for his vital role in the invention of cardiac catheterization. Cournand wrote "the self-experiment reported by Werner Forssmann in 1929 provides a dramatic prelude to the era of cardiac catheterization in man. Forssmann was at the time 25 years of age. He had recently graduated from medical school and was pursuing his surgical training at the clinic of Eberswalde, a small town near Berlin. With the boldness of youth and against the advice of colleagues who had made an abortive prior attempt on him, he exposed one of his own left arm veins, introduced a ureteral catheter into his venous system, and advanced it, under fluoroscopic control and using a mirror, up to his right atrium. Forssmann allowed the catheter to remain in this position at least long enough that he could climb a few stairs to the X-ray department, where chest films were taken.... Attempts have been made to disclaim Forssmann's priority. In an addendum to his first report, published a month later, he acknowledged that Unger had informed him of earlier work by Bleichroder's group. Indeed, in 1912, Bleichroder, Unger, and Loeb reported several successful passages of a catheter into arm or leg veins of patients with subsequent advancement of its tip into the axilla, or into the inferior vena cava. Some of these experiments were made on themselves or their assistants. However, these investigators did not control the exact location of the catheter tip by X-ray....Other claims of priority do not even deserve mention." (Cournand, Cardiac catheterization: Development of the technique, 1975). Forssmann's article includes the iconic X-ray image that documents the position of the catheter in his right atrium.