the history of surgery in world war i: a correspondence between fedor krause (1857 – 1937) and arthur simons (1877 – 1942)

This study focuses on a correspondence between the surgeon, fedorkrause (1857 – 1937), and the neurologist, arthur simons (1877 – 1942),who specialized in muscle neurology. the correspondence shows manyinteresting aspects of surgery at the time of world war i. it is especiallyremarkable that the important surgeon, august bier (1861 – 1949), iscriticized in this correspondence. one major problem of german surgeryat the beginning of the 20th century was the fact that patients often werenot mobilized sufficiently and instead, unnecessarily were told to stayin bed (“bettruhe”) for many weeks, and in many cases, patients alsowere unnecessarily told to move as little as possible. even giving massageswas considered harmful. this is in contrast to today’s principle ofearly mobility (eras). the correspondence between these two scholarsclearly indicates that these wrong principles were propagated by certainimportant surgeons in germany (like august bier) and that these principleswere rather based on their personal opinions than on scientificevidence. more than 100 years ago, there were already some physicians,like arthur simons or fedor krause, who openly criticized these wrongapproaches in german surgery.