Document EdxLOGJ56w2vQv4pZGGjaBe7g

284 NOTES TO PAGES 21-23 Central Committee for Cancer Research in 1900, the same year London's Mid dlesex Cancer Research Laboratories were established. 39. Blumenthal, "Zum 25-jahrigen Bestehen," pp. 97-107. The surgeon The odor Billroth (1829-1894) claimed to be seeing higher cancer rates in his clini cal practice in Austria; his fears were confirmed by Robert Behla in "Uber vermehrtes und endemisches Vorkommen des Krebses," Centralblatt fiir Bacteriologie 24 (1898): 780 ff., and by F. Reiche (for Hamburg) in his "Zur Verbreitung des Carcinoms," Miinchener medizinische Wochenschrifi 47 (1900): 1337-39. 40. Fritz Lickint, Die Krebsfrage im Lichte der modemen Forschung (Berlin: F. A. Herbig, 1935), p. 5. Lickint's characterization of cancer as Germany's num ber one cause of death involved a statistical sleight of hand: he distinguished two types of heart attack, allowing cancer rates to appear higher than either type separately. Cancer in the 1930s was more commonly--and accurately-- described as Germany's second leading cause of death. In 1892, 126,000 Ger mans died of tuberculosis; this had fallen to 48,000 by 1932. The numbers for cancer in these two years, by contrast, were 28,000 and 87,000. 41. "Mitteilungen," Monatsschrift fiir Krebsbekampfung 9 (1941): 158. 42. See my Racial Hygiene, pp. 21-22 and 227-50. 43. Georg Boehncke, "Tabak und Volksgesundheit," Offentlicher Gesundheitsdienst 1 (1935): 625. 44. Responding to critiques of his 1932 book on cancer, Liek compared his own plight to that of other much-maligned scientific greats, including Par acelsus, Vesalius, Lister, Pasteur, and Freud. According to Liek, the Viennese psychoanalyst was shamefully "laughed out of court" when he presented his pioneering ideas to the Viennese Medical Society. See Erwin Liek, Der Kampf gegen den Krebs (Munich: Lehmann, 1934), p. 13. 45. Erwin Liek, "Versuche am Menschen" (1928), in his Gedanken eines Arztes (Dresden: Carl Reissner Verlag, 1937). 46. On Liek's life and work, see Wolfgang Schmid, Die Bedeutung Erwin Lieks fiir das Selbstverstandnis der Medizin in Weimarer Republik und Nationalsozialismus (Erlangen-Nuremberg: Med. diss., 1989); Michael Kater, "Die Me dizin im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und Erwin Liek," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 16 (1990): 440-63; Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach, "Der wahre Arzt und das Wunder der Heilkunde: Erwin Lieks arztlich-heilkundliche Ganzheitsideen," in Der game Mensch und die Medizin (Berlin: Argument-Sonderband, 1989), pp. 33-53; and Michael Jehs, Erwin Liek: Weltanschauung und standespolitische Einstellung im Spiegel seiner Schriften (Frankfurt: Mabuse, 1994). 47. Werner Zabel, "Erwin Liek zum Gedachtnis," Hippokrates 6 (1935): 188; Kater, Doctors under Hitler, p. 227. According to Liek's close friend Alfred Brauchle, Wagner asked Liek to head the Rudolf Hess Hospital in Dresden, but Liek was forced to decline for health reasons; see Brauchle's Naturheilkunde in Lebensbildem (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1937), p. 397. 48. Erwin Liek, Die Welt des Arztes: Aus 30 Jahren Praxis (Munich: Lehmann, 1933), pp. 239-41. 49. Weindling, Health, pp. 169-70; Michael A. Grodin, "Historical Origins of the Nuremberg Code," in The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human NOTES TO PAGES 23-25 285 Rights in Human Experimentation, ed. George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 127-28. 50. The Lehmann Verlag, the most important publisher of racial theory and racial hygiene during the Nazi period, was disbanded after World War II as a Nazi-affiliated press. The firm's medical and military books were distributed to the Springer and Berg publishing houses, and the racial books went to the Hamburg-based Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir biologische Anthropologie, an or ganization with strong neo-Nazi ties. Scandalously, all official German medi cal bookstores still today bear the Lehmann name. For the early history of the house, see Hermann Wilhelm, Dichter, Denker, Fememdrder: Rechtsradikalismus und Antisemitismus in Miinchen von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1921 (Berlin: Tran sit, 1989), pp. 118-27. 51. Liek, Welt des Arztes, pp. 239-44; Jehs, Erwin Liek, pp. 36-38. 52. Frederick L. Hoffman, America's premier cancer preventionist of the era (and a dyed-in-the-wool racist), praised Liek as "an outstanding contributor to medical literature" and "a very earnest and competent authority"; see his Can cer and Diet (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1937), pp. 92,105. Liek was a tal ented writer, priding himself on his clarity and his avoidance of the jargon (Kauderwelsch) of his academic colleagues. He was a member of the governing board of the Deutsche Sprachverein, an organization devoted to preserving the German language. Liek's gift was conceded even by critics such as FischerWasels, who labeled him a "seductive stylist," and Georg Wolff, who said his cancer book read "almost like a novel" (Liek, Der Kampf, pp. 14-15). 53. Erwin Liek, Krebsverbreitung, Krebsbekampfung, Krebsverhiitung (Munich: Lehmann, 1932). 54. See Frederick L. Hoffman, The Mortalityfrom Cancer throughout the World (Newark: Prudential Press, 1915); Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Cancer: Disease ofCiv ilization? (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960); also my Cancer Wars, pp. 16-34. 55. Liek, Der Kampf, p. 24. 56. Ibid., pp. 25-27. 57. Georg Ernst Konjetzny, "Chronische Gastritis und Magenkrebs," Mo natsschrift fiir Krebsbekampfung 2 (1934): 76-78. Opinions on Liek's 1932 book ranged, as noted in his 1934 preface, from Meisterwerk to Mist (masterpiece to horseshit). Fischer-Wasels of Frankfurt claimed that it contained "not a single new fact"; a reviewer in the Arztliche Wegweiser stated that it brought forth "nothing new." The natural lifestyle advocate Max Oskar Bircher-Benner, by contrast, praised the book as revealing "the only way to combat cancer"; see Liek, Der Kampf, pp. 9-10. 58. Liek, Der Kampf, pp. 11-12. 59. Niimberger Zeitung, no. 266 (1935): 5. Streicher said that Krankheitsverhtitung was more important than Krankheitsbekampfung. 60. "Die Aufgabe," Monatsschrift fiir Krebsbekampfung 1 (1933): 2. Hermann Druckrey claimed that "Die beste Therapie ist die Prophylaxe" in his "Ergebnisse der experimentellen Krebstherapie," Zeitschrift fiir Krebsforschung 47 (1938): 124. The Monatsschriftfiir Krebsbekampfung was subtitled Verhiitung, Erkennung und Behandlung bosartiger Geschwiilste, which makes it the world's first cancer journal to include the word "prevention" in its title.