First of all my life was not such that at the age of eighteen I knew exactly what decency was and that I had gone this way with the utmost feeling and conviction. Later on as a teacher I have always doubted that. The Junk people in that early period know so clearly what the worries are which confront a physician. If, in spite of this, so many physicians are successful, then this is not due to their choice of a profession, but the decisive thing is hat the medical profession offers an opportunity to a man as a scientist, as an official, as a practicing physician and as a person who is earning his own living, and it offers the opportunity to gave a personality more of a manifold picture and in order to go into the details of my beginning it seems more important to me that I came from a bourgeois house and that I fought in the first world war as a little soldier; that I saw the end of the war as a prisoner of war, and that suddenly I was in a mass without any leadership and without any aim or goal and I was given another political education and we obtained the newspapers from the Leftist Party, heard the reports and we heard about the things which were alleged to have happened at home, in which everything that had been regulated in an orderly manner in our previous lives, the Emperor, the King, the oath, the relationship to our superiors, was just stopped and discontinued very un-dramatically and without any resistance on the part of the bourgeois citizens. On the other hand the want was so great for everybody who returned that the choice of a profession was made according to the conditions that prevailed.
My father was a physician and I knew a little bit about the profession and I was able to assist him to some extent. I studied with him and in the Munich schools there was a groat class of teachers but at that tin., the position of the teacher at the schools of higher learning was subjected to some extent to the pressure of political tendency, so that actually it only thanks to my father that I learned the beginning of the medical profession.
I came to the Sauerbruchs Clinic because of my father's influence. My teacher Sauerbruch was always telling us about some political development and had a large staff of assistants around him where he exercised an iron discipline in accordance with his principles.
I received the general surgical training of this classical school for seven years and it will not be necessary to explain that in detail. However, I think it is more essential for me to emphasize that there was a dissatisfaction with the developments of the time and people were assured that the situation would never change in Germany unless the social need of the time was combatted.
Without any political connections I felt the call of a doctor who concerned himself with the social questions of a general nature. The most impressive things at this large clinic were that a patient was clinically cared for in the truest sense of the word, that the many institutions of welfare in that clinic with reference to the individual were intolerant according to political and confessional view point or with us in Bavaria, according to the Landsmannschaft to diminish the welfare.
Today, particularly in my despair, I think that I can well say that I in Germany was the first one to make the attempt of saying that wealthier institutions and clinics as an institution should be cared for by the State, but for the real interest of the people that such a welfare is instituted in the sense that impressed me to help and assist all of the workers and students, everybody who was impoverished, and help them see beyond their mere treatment and bring about a healthy condition of the entire human being, that is to say, it is a declaration of war against the very individual and comfortable and ordinary Activities of the physician, when their aid is dependent upon the money that they may receive from the individual.
From the last war up to this war I never earned considerable amounts of money because of my patients. I was not paid by the Party, the SS or the State, and I remained at Hohenlychen in spite of my international practice for reasons of principle. When I had to defend myself before various honorary courts, I have said that I was of the opinion that one may sell articles of luxury at more expensive prices because people can do without them; one can be very expensive in performing cosmetical luxurious operations on a film star because that woman can be dispensed with.
However, as a specialist as I was one, one cannot apply that to operations which are necessary in the case of people who are impoverished and one cannot just connect it with a public enterprise.
I want to emphasize these principles initially because that explains my position and there was a great many German physicians who thought the same way as I did. We were the men who started the students and who again and again had to interrupt their corners because of the necessity of living to earn money, because of war, events and other incidents. I think that I can say one thing in favor of that group, he were the most outspoken pacifists in Germany because we wanted to connect ourselves with ordinary civil life, but I think we were also the ones who were most ready to make sacrifices. At any rate we didn't embark upon a career where working hard demanded reprimands and burdens could be applied to us. During my career because of the pressure exercised on me at the Sauerbruch clinic I desisted from any political activity. I remained the friend and physician cf the poor and the ones who were in need.
A (continued) I remained the friend and the physician cf the poor and the ones who were in need. My camps had no very special attributes, but, perhaps, I can quote from the early report which is contained in my next document. I would like to quote two or three sentences because they illustrate the tendency of our desire and I think it is my perfect right to defend myself against these slogans against the simplicity of description as if only a black and white, and I feel I have to passionately define my position in that regard and in the interest of the young.
The yearly report states by saying "To help and to be a physician must never have anything to do with money." Many of our officials did not like the sense of this sentence because it effected their personal earnings. The most important thing, it seems to me, is to emphasize the following quotation; "That I see an extreme danger in the fact that in all welfare questions laymen are concerning themselves with judgment of medical affairs and very easily when judging over-estimate external systems - cosmetical and general systems, without understanding the essential point of the development of the disease and to understand things concerning fate, the fateful points of the disease." I think that I repeated the sentences which originated from 1929 up to the year 1945 and I sincerely represented it.
And from trial the year of 1931, that is the time in Munich, when as Dr. Leibbrandt stated, a group came up and only represented the negative side of the physician. My camp of the physically injured for the first time accepts insane persons and I may use this example because it is of some importance with reference to the discussion here, You know that there are countries abroad from cur point of view who speak about the position of the feeble minded. Through this experiment I have proved that even in the case of juvenile feeble minded it is hard to decide what cannot be changed and is born heritage or, on the other hand, what may be the inferences of a bad education which caused him to follow the example of other feeble minded with which he came into contact. During the so-called controlled experiments at the Munich-Augsburg Institute, and I shall later submit proof for all my statements, I included youthful persons into the healthy sport groups, whose feeble mindedness had been finally established from a psychiatric point of view.
By virtue of this living together - this community life with the healthy people - with the good example, people were educated by me - the result was that of 20 feeble minded young persons ten left the institution, were released from the institution and the other half had to return to the institution, either immediately or during the course of the time. I only want to cite this example because this is a medical educational experiment which in many cases even in the United States had been repeated and is only here to prove that we in Germany aren't people who were just cowards and stupid, hut that we had concerns about people who were impoverished and who were in need and we wanted to embark on our bit together with them.
Q During the year of 1942, witness, you became lecturer of surgery at the University of Munich. How did this appointment come about and what was the subject of your habilitation thesis?
A I may give you a few dates because of the year of 1933 which was such an important change and since I am being accused of being stupid, not educated, and having acted without any feeling of responsibility, and that only because of my youthful acquaintance ship with Himmler I achieved my high rank. In 1932 I was a fully pledged surgical assistant. I had professional education in pathology and surgery in 1932 and 1933 and at that time already had two special fields, one of which was the follow-up treatment through gymnastics and the disease itself by surgery. I was the first physician of the Surgical Clinic cf the Sport Clinic. I had connection with all Sport Associations. I was a member of the workers Sport Association by virtue of my camps. I was one of the first professional advisors, medical advisors of Munich, and assisted in cases of retraining, reeducation, etc. I was teacher at the school for gymnastics of patients and I think that the tendency of Germany with reference to surgical gymnastics would not quite be silent about my name and my participation. On the other hand it was never my intention to become a university professor and in the year 1932 I endeavored to go to a little hospital which was in the scope of activity of my father, when in the year 1932 Dr. Lexer offered me a university career.
During the transition period of 1932 and 1933 I already was a member of customary associations. I don't think it is necessary for me to list all these national associations because one just cannot be accepted into Germany society otherwise, just as it is true abroad, one only needs two warrantors. I was also a member of many international associations and societies which was a little more difficult and oven after 1933 remained a member. In the year 1934 I held a speech in Poland about the problems of surgical tuberculosis. It was a common discussion with an Italian and a Frenchman. In the year of 1935 I spoke at the Saubonne at Paris and the French Chairmanship, I was a member of the International Association of Sport Physicians and of the International Surgical Association. All that wasn't very important but at the same time I want to demonstrate these matters in order to show that before 1933, after 1933, until the very end I was a person with whom people were in communication, that I have much to thank the many people abroad for, and that on the other hand I have been a person to help quite a number of people abroad.
Q. I think there is a s light mistake with reference to your professional education between 1923 and 1933.
A. Yes.
Q. Witness, when did you become chief physician at the institute at Hohenlychen and how did this appointment come about? Where were these institutions, what was the special purpose that you had in mind and what was the situation when you took over these institutions as chief physician?
A. The institutions at Hohenlychen were not concentration camps and have nothing to do with the concentration camp of Ravensbruck. My decent collaborators had nothing to do there except under some order which didn't affect the camp Hohenlychen. Hohenlychen had before been under the leadership of Geheimrat Bier who is the third one of the three classical surgeons of Germany - Bier, Sauerbruch and Lexer. This had been a purely tuberculosis institution. It was a privat welfare institution and in 1933, since all the entire tuberculosis movement had undergone a change, it had become no longer necessary because the transportation of tuberculosis diseased to the sea and mountains was preferred. When the Third Reich was created and newly founded, the Reich Sport Leadership originated. That is to say, it was endeavored to comprise the entire sport activities which, on one side, led to many individual limitations but which, on the other hand, over-emphasized the importance of the Reich sport associations - the sport associations of the people who were well off or of the so-called "semi-amateur" who was paid b industry. On the. other hand, the Reich sport leaders Von Tschammer and Osten attempted to further support the sport movement of the youth, the sport association of the worker. My dear friend, Hans Von Tschammer, was an old man who had been wounded during the war and had social interest ../... to care for tho man who had boon wounded.
On tho basis of my work and my experiments in Munich I, who was not a member of tho Party - and that is something I want to mention, b tho way - was appointed as consulting physician of tho German sport and hold this loading position from tho year 1933 to tho end and throughout tho entire war, and that about this time I had no connections with Himmler. That was because of the understanding by the chief of the Wehrmacht Medical Service who realized tho necessity of caring for war wounded also by way of sport. That is to say, if they were to be taken out of tho Amy and to be included into sport associationsin very many cases Hohenlychen. In order to be able to carry out my work, I needed support from the Reich sport leader, Hohenlychen, at that time, had great difficulties and I had taken it over as a private chief of a private clinic. The insulting words "the Nazi fortress" certainly is not true of the initial period of time. Hohenlychen was the most tolerant institution of Germany, included a thousand bods, and was organized only to concern itself with the three concepts of disease. That is in contrast to the typical German hospital which concerned itself with general care and of which there were a number already under the leadership of experienced physicians. I tried to limit my institution to three concepts of disease. Tho first; sport accident, and it was not my intention to help only people who had money and who load a comfortable professional life and to alleviate only their lives because of our treatment, but, to the contrary, we were mainly concerned with these pure sport people where had work was connected with the joy of sport but whose external conditions of life were so unfavorable that they exhausted themselves because of hunger and because of need. There by a paradox situation came about; namely, that tho least incident, tho least small accident would load to severe physical injury in tho case of those pooplo who lived under such bad conditions. More important than any other results during treatment seems to me to be one thing and that is something that couldn't just be left out even after my death, and that is to say that I created the German sport aid.
I originated that suggestion between the bureaucratic social insurance of Germany and the private insurance or the money of the individual. I tried to institute an institution of insurance which, while led by the state, could still be generally applied to everybody and that in order to enable any man who are still had joy in sport to care for his injury without having to undergo any sacrifices. Since another example was mentioned before, I may touch upon that too. Every entrance fee that was apid for any sport event in Germany was taxed by 10 or 20 pfennigs and these were placed at the disposal of the Reich sport leader for the purpose of welfare and I want to emphasize that because this shows the contrast of our thinking and our opposition to any old customary state insurance system. The individual, after being injured or after having an accident, received full medical care. However, we didn't want any continual payment of sick money, so to speak. We didn't want any pension and we thereby avoided all that of which Germany is accused by foreign countries - and rightly, in reference to their insurance system; namely, that it paralyzes the working capacity of the individual relying upon some compensation by the state which is far from sufficient. But on the other hand, we created working places for our people who were severely injured. From Hohenlychen, up to the year of 1937, I had 4800 injured workers and sportsmen under my continual control. We created working pairs from them. That is to say, whenever anyone lost his arm we didn't just take him out of his profession as a locksmith or whatever it may have been in order to just let him stand around in some pseudo-activity, but told him to go back to his profession, I left him there in order that his experience would be maintained. But to other with him I added an apprentice who would support his old master who had lost his arm and who would be an additional aid. All these thins have shown their value and they are being re-introduced today under small changes of the names.
THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will now be in recess until 1:30.
(A recess was taken until 1330 hours.)
AFTERNOON SESSION (The hearing reconvened at 1330 hours, 4 March 1947.)
THE MARSHAL: Persons in the courtroom will please find their seats.
The Tribunal is again in session.
THE PRESIDENT: Counsel may proceed.
KARL GEBHARDT - Resumed DIRECT EXAMINATION (Continued) BY DR. SEIDL:
Q. Witness, I was told that some cf what you have said did not come through. I therefore ask you to make shorter sentences and in order to clarify some of the misunderstandings I ask you once more: When you were appointed as Chief Physician in 1933 to Hohenlychen, did you have any relationship to Himmler or did he exercise any influence on that appointment?
A. I think I have said before that I was assigned to this position and that there was no political background connected with it whatsoever. I came over through purely academic channels. I was the consulting physician with the Reich Sport Leadership which was a central medical position. Secondly, I was professor for the Reich Academy for Sport Activities and I was there the leader of the medical department. Thirdly, I was the Chief Physician of the Institute at Hohenlychen. At that time I had n connections at all to the SS or Himmler.
Q. The word "Institute" Hohenlychen was sometimes connected with the word "camp". Was the clinic organized in the form of a camp or how was it really organized?
A. It was a modernly built large clinic with over a thousand beds, 15 to 20 buildings. There were departments for children, for tuberculosis, for sport, for various lung diseases. The buildings were separated according to the various fields.
Q. This morning you spoke about the thought which you had when, in 1933, you took over the position as Chief Physician. Did you succeed in realizing these thoughts during the course of the years?
A. I may point out very shortly that 3 men decisively influenced this work and represented these thoughts together with me. Those were my immediate superiors an my friends. One of them was a sport leader who represented the entire sector of German sport. Then there was Dr. Todt, who represented the entire labor system, who worked on the Autobahn, and who was greatly concerned with these who were injured through work; I think in the year 1937 I received a position with Dr. Todt in a similar capacity as the one which I held in sport activities, that is, consultant. My scientific and spiritual leader was Dr. Guendt of the Reich Ministry of Education, who not only was an old sportsman and a German champion but also was an anthropologist and had the entire scientific supervision ever sport activities as well as the Institute at Hohenlychen.
At the same time I may mention that Hohenlychen was a private institution and it was intended for welfare. Before it had been purely at the disposal of tuberculosis patients. From 1933 this institution was newly founded and extended. I have already mentioned the 3 decisive men; they were Tschammer, Todt, and Kruemmel. In addition, Generaleberstabsarzt Waldmann became a member of the so-called Curatorium. He knew my family and I knew him from Munich; he saw to it that any sport-injured members of the Wehrmacht who expressed the wish to go to Hohenlychen could be accepted there without any difficulties.
Hohenlychen was under the supervision of the state as a private institution, as was tho case in every German welfare institution.
The state supervision was at one time exercised by Dr. Conti as Ministerialrat in the Prussian Ministry and as I said before, supervision was exercised by the Reich Ministry of Education, by Director Dr. Kruemmel. The development of Hohenlychen itself was concerned with sport, people who were injured by work or injured through any other means.
In 1937 and 1938 we concerned ourselves only with the surgical treatment of children with infantile paralysis. It was a matter of course that we extended ourselves and received support. We did not have the same number of patients as other hospitals, that is, patients who went to the closest physician when they experienced any injury. My experience was always devoted to the final stages of a disease, that is to say, to help those who were most severely injured. After these people who were severely injured from sport, after they were rehabilitated by us they again, for instance, played on their international teams; we were also concerned with wounds from the last war which had not yet healed and in addition we were concerned with infantile paralysis, something which were taken from their entire surroundings and the concern of their parents It was quite natural that we received a large number of patients who had a certain special position in Germany and this was something which was supported by German physicians.
We had two opportunities for help in that connection. There was an Olympiads in Germany, of which I was loading physician, for the Olympic Games. I had 20 assistants with me in that capacity and during peacetime about ten guest assistants coming from abroad. It had become customary to distribute cur educational films and many German sportsmen and even sportsmen who were injured abroad came to us.
Another momentum may perhaps have been of more decisive importance, namely that my surgical experiments with infantile paralysis had to have a certain prerequisite. Choosing from about 800 infantile paralysis cases, I selected those where the patient was perfectly healthy with the exception of one limb or one leg. Extending an idea which came from another side we tried to draw the strength of the healthy side of the patient towards that sick leg, in other words, to see whether with the right shoulder and the right limbs, the left leg could be moved.
This extension of the muscles comparable to something that follows the principle of the branch of a tree which extends towards each side. This principle was only possible if the patient stayed with us for a long period of time and could survive the transition period without any burden or particular effort.
Hohenlychen is situated near lake, and I had beats, which enabled the children inflicted with infantile paralysis to stay on the water for an entire day. During the winter we introduced salt into the water and therefore improved our bathing facilities. The real solution, however, was something that we copied from 'Warm Springs' from where we thought the therapy was on how infantile paralysis was to be cured and treated.
Q. Witness, have you finished that? Now, will you please shortly describe to the Tribunal the development of your clinics during the War?
A. During the War Hohenlychen was divided into three departments. One was the old civilian department, where there were children and women, which included about 300 beds. They added another 400 beds for the Wehrmacht and 300 beds for the Army --- that is 300 beds for the SS. Excuse me. I was the Chief of all of these departments, but because of being committed to the front I mostly had a deputy there, and from the year 1943 on the Department of the SS and the Wehrmacht were merged, and a number of my people and assistants who were with the Army were returned, so that Hohenlychen was again being lead as was the case in peace time. We had a very certain and out-spoken game and we found great understanding for that from all sides.
It may be characteristic to cite an experience from my time as a young physician when I talked about the differences between medical education and the social need of our surroundings. One bitter experience had become clear to me, -- in the case of all extreme political disputes the most incurable are the people who had suffered heavy injury and who had lost their compensation since the last War, and they are the one which it is the most difficult to convince. Our own political parties in Germany that time, and probably now, to the crippled poor man became the problem who could not manage without the help of the State.
I made it clear that Hohenlychen after this War should become the central station for all injured people, and above all should accept those injured people, where not the amputation as such is put into the foreground but the very peculiar psyche logical distortion which is so often the case in the crippled patient. We had gardens, bathing facilities, schools. We would accept remnants of the activities, and for that purpose I trained a staff of physicians and sport teachers ever since 1943, and in the year 1943 I gave Germany the outlines for the purpose of caring for the injured, and those that were injured by sport; and it is for this hyper-imposed thought that Hohenlychen served through the entire war.
Q. Know come back to your further scientific career; when did you become the extraordinary professor for surgery?
A. As a lecturer of surgery I came to Berlin from Munich in 1935. I became extraordinary, and in 1937 I became ordinary professor. At that time we had a very loose connection with the faculty of the University. My main emphasis was to the Reich Academy of sport.
Q. You have heard the testimony of the witness, Professor Dr. Leibrandt, with reference to the Oath of Hypocrates. What is your position now and what was it before, with regard to the contents of that oath?
A. May I be permitted, even as a defendant, to express my surprise that in the case of the testimony of Dr. Leibrandt, and in the case of our examination, one very comfortable sentence is used, "Don't you know the Oath of Hypocrates?" These are very clear moral principles against which no doctor can act. Dr. Leibrandt called it the longest established Code of Honor of physicians, and I had the impression that one was just using this sentence in a legal manner.
I can refer to a paper by me from the year of 1940, and I know that it is not my job to give my opinion, but my concerns and the feeling of insecurity which prevailed with every honest decent surgeon when he wanted to define his action towards one moral principle, that is something I do want to described.
The so-called Oath of Hypocrates, which in reality is the old Asccpiato Oath, and certainly has nothing to do with the person of Hypocrates, and is really much older, is now being presented in a manner as if there is a medical ethics which is unchangeable. I believe, using all reticence, I can well say that every ethic is part of a philosophical principle. Each philosophical principle is depending upon its time, upon the situation, and upon the scale of value into which you include it. At that time I wrote, "The Ascepiate Oath in its introductory sentence must be understood in a way that the oath with the God means a determination, namely the question arises what is the supreme principle, of the physician from which he can derive the moral activity." Certainly not Apollo is being spoken to in that connection. There are a number of physicians where the metaphysical super-imposed concept of the supreme order is outside any natural events. That has much to do with the physicians of the renaissance, and in modern times has nothing at all to do with them. This physician, in most cases, is an Athiest, an unbeliever, or perhaps better expressed to take the man, the individual himself as a measure of all things. He doesn't speak about what is fate and hat is changeable. This work for the individual as the only thing is now being passed to us as the best. I committed myself to point out what the most important part of our discussions in previous time was. It is the fourth sentence of the Oath of Hypocrates, "I want to help without any consideration for award." I always have had this concern about this exaggerated activity of the physician. One concern is that it is only concentrated, and is depending on the human being and the nature, just considering the natural development without considering any supreme powers; and secondly, I have known so many individual physicians, who certainly were ready to help, but as a specialist always asked "What can the man pay?"
You can apply yet another measure of medical activity. You can say that we don't primarily think of the individual, but we think in the entirety, help of the poor and of the number of poor. I would describe that as the social altruisin which says that we can only help to a limited extent, if as physicians our time is limited, if it moans our welfare, the means of giving are limited, theme don't have the right and we must not have the interest to primarily help the person who can surround himself with a number of specialists because he can pay for them. We must found collective communities of need and I was always answered, "Well, we have these things, we have welfare institutions, etc." We know that they are very doubtful limits to these institutions, but it is important to point out that whenever the aid of a physician changes to a collective community of need, that naturally the obligation of secrecy of a physician must of necessity stop. It is much more decisive than the indications of Hitler that some few people, who were in leading positions, had to break this duty of secrecy.
In the time of Bismarck social insurance was introduced, pensions were introduced, trade unions were introduced and there was hardly any or a very limited secrecy in the case of the physicians. That led to a situation that the poor man, who was a member of the insurance company, could no longer choose the physician and that between the physician and the patient there was a bureaucratic state order, some bureaucratic welfare institutions and that a number of secretaries and clerks were getting acquainted with the need, the suffering and the concerns of the patient.
And now as a third consideration, the medical situation has changed completely. Not because of the physician, but because he is ordered to do it whenever a totalitarian state wants to take over the medical welfare institutions. When I heard about the first totalitarian state experiments on human welfare, I found that this was the German state. I said that this was a mass experiment on a state level and that the sentence that must cause most concern is the sentence, "What is necessary must be right". We don't know who defines what is necessary, but it is important to establish that the physician who really works in the totalitarian state and is convinced of his work not only stands by his own individual patient, not only has a possibility to work in this community of need, which he himself should choose, but over him are concepts like necessity of the state, statistics of the state, the needs of the state, if the state, in its medical orders, decides what question it wants to solve.
You know that these state orders were always mentioned in Russia during the very first five year plan and that applied to the medical field too. At that time I wrote that it was an extraordinary important decision to decide whether a physician stands alone in the liberal country and is alone in contact with any patient concerned. All of us will envy the physician like that, but one cannot tell me that this is ethically the best physician for the ethical and clinical welfare.
I, naturally, am today very grateful and have great respect for many physicians who live according to this individual Democratic life, but I know quite a number of business men who also belong to that life too. I was in the position of the so-called social altruisin, I also had the concept that the state should steer, the state should govern, the state should interfere in private welfare, which would comprise large communities of need and most emphasis had to be given to the poor and to the youth.
I saw many drafts of the Reveridge Plan and I think that this is the ideal solution. I was always an opponent of the German social insurance. That was before 1933 and after 1933 for this is too bureaucratic and it forces the physician to become an official. During the war, development of these totalitarian state principles were increasingly intensified. Perhaps I should place Hippocrates where he really belonged. In history Hippocrates comes from the old excleate school, he is a priest physician. From the very early days he personally believed in a heavenly connection. In the case of mentally ill patients, he assumed that it was the Gods who had distorted their brain. He opened the brain, he finds naturally in a few cases that there is some swelling and in a few cases he can cure. I am sure that he must have killed a number of people where there was infirmity, because he believed in the fact that it was something brought about by God.
He is inventor of ideaplastic, that is to say he believed that when he could create on his island a big maternity ward and then show these people classical pictures of beauty, pictures of external beauty, then these women if only concerned with the classical beauty in their thoughts, would eventually also produce beautiful children. That is the point of my statement.
There is no book to which Himmler more often referred than to the book of Hippocrates. Ever since 1940 it was on his desk and this damned ideoplastic ideal which bases judgment of a human being according to external points of view, he thought had a classical basis. He produced something further. In the old publication of Hippocrates, it says that he had a friend called Dragilos, who was a great banker of Athens, who was the invented of the first narcosis of a certain sleep by the use of a root. Himmler had used a second proof which he took from Hippocrates, he said that according to his opinion only after collaboration with a layman, the first narcosis had been invented. I want to express with that that Hippocrates bowing and respecting this big medical figure, who was depending on a fate, who was depending on a scientific research, he was depending on the political situation and surprisingly even depending on certain classical imagination, which were respected in our majority.
Without comparing myself to that, may I please define my own position in this division. The name for Bier contained the following sentence, which was written on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, "The biggest error is to believe that an individual effect or external signs are decisive for judging the value of a human being. The amount of the effort is the effective factor." This depends on the biological and moral reserve stocks of the human being. In 1940, I tried to teach Himmler this correction of his conception of Hippocrates, but he as a layman just read from it as a layman what he considered to be useful. I think that the physician who has an inner feeling of decency is the man who most probably will always believe in God. This man would be the most decent doctor who would help the poor.
