Hitler's Gift by Jean Medawar

Author:Jean Medawar [Medawar, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-421-5
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2016-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

EDITH BüLBRING

Edith Bulbring’s father was a professor of English at Bonn University, which must have been an advantage for her. When Karl, Edith’s father, died young, his brother took over as head of the family. He contributed to the founding of the city of Tel Aviv and many schools in the Netherlands, where the family had roots. He was notably friendly to everyone; when asked by Edith during the First World War which side he was on he said: ‘I am German-friendly and also English-friendly; I am totally friendly.’

At high school Edith nearly decided to make a career in music but finally opted for medicine. After she qualified in 1924 she spent time in various physiological research centres in Germany and the Netherlands before taking a position in the infectious disease unit in Berlin’s Virchow Hospital in early 1933, just before her superior, Ulrich Friedemann, and many of his junior staff, who were Jewish, were all dismissed. Only her mother was Jewish, so she had only two Jewish grandparents. This was two too many for the Nazis.

Her dismissal was particularly ironic. She was a junior doctor in the children’s department of a hospital when a boy was admitted with diphtheria. The membrane was growing across his larynx and threatened to suffocate him — he needed an operation to save his life. Edith sent to the Ear, Nose and Throat department for a surgeon, to be told that there was none — they had all been dismissed. She had never done the operation but a nurse had assisted on many occasions. Between them they succeeded and the boy’s life was saved.

Edith “was so pleased with herself that when she was challenged by the hospital’s director: ‘Miss Bulbring, I have been told that you are Jewish’, she burst out laughing. The director was furious: ‘Miss Bulbring, this is no laughing matter. Leave the hospital at once.’

She did. She and her sister took a holiday in London, where she visited her old chief, who had fled there and was working at the Medical Research Council in Hampstead. She was surprised and delighted to be offered a job by Sir Henry Dale, and she “went to work with J. H. Burn at the Pharmaceutical Society in London. Her career took off and she went on to Oxford, where she stayed for the rest of her life. She was a pioneer of the study of smooth muscle (in arterial and gut walls, as distinct from the muscles which make voluntary movements) and made important contributions to the burgeoning field of neuro-transmission. In 1958 Edith Bulbring was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. She died in 1990 at the age of 87.

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