Dr Friedrich Weleminsky | |
|---|---|
 Portrait picture of Friedrich & Jenny Weleminsky c. 1905–1910 | |
| Born | 20 January 1868 |
| Died | 1 January 1945 (aged 76) London, England |
| Burial place | Golders Green Jewish Cemetery |
| Nationality | Austrian (from birth); British (from 1940s) |
| Education | Kreuzschule, Dresden, Germany |
| Alma mater | Charles University (The German University, Prague) |
| Occupation(s) | Physician, scientist and a Privatdozent in Hygiene (now called Microbiology) |
| Spouse(s) | Jenny Weleminsky, née Elbogen |
| Children | Three daughters and one son: Marianne; Anton; Eliesabeth (Jardenah); Dorothea (Leah) |
| Parent(s) | Jacob Weleminsky and Bertha Kohn |
| Medical career | |
| Institutions | Charles University (The German University, Prague) |
| Notable works | Developing tuberculomucin Weleminsky, a treatment for tuberculosis |
Dr Joseph Friedrich ("Fritz") Weleminsky (20 January 1868, in Golčův Jeníkov – 1 January 1945, in London), was a physician, a scientist and a privatdozent in Hygiene (now called Microbiology) at the German University, Prague[note 1] who, in the early 20th century, created an alternative treatment for tuberculosis, tuberculomucin Weleminsky.[1]
He was born into a Jewish family on 20 January 1868 at Golčův Jeníkov in Bohemia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in the Czech Republic. His parents were Jacob Weleminsky (1834–1905), a general medical practitioner (GP) in Golčův Jeníkov, and his wife Bertha (née Kohn; 1844–1914).[2] Friedrich was their second child; he had an elder sister, Paula (1867–1936), who in 1888 married a Dresden lawyer, Felix Popper, and a younger brother, Josef ("Pepi") (1870–1937) who, like Friedrich, studied medicine in Prague and who went on to become a laryngologist.
The family moved to Dresden in 1879 when Jacob obtained a position as GP there, and later to Prague. Friedrich attended the Kreuzschule in Dresden and studied medicine in Prague.[citation needed]
Friedrich Weleminsky enrolled in the medical faculty of the German University in Prague in 1893 and obtained a habilitation qualification as Dr.Med. in 1900.[3] He was appointed to a teaching post in the university's medical faculty as a privatdozent in Hygiene in July 1900.[3]
During the First World War, Weleminsky was in charge of the reserve hospital "Halicz" which was stationed in various parts of Austria and Hungary. While stationed in Kleinreifling, a village in the district of Steyr-Land in Upper Austria, he successfully brought a local typhoid epidemic under control, for which he was made an Ehrenbürger of Weyer.[4]
Weleminsky's particular area of interest was vaccination against tuberculosis. In 1935, an editorial in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology cited one of his articles[5] as providing "a good review of the voluminous literature accumulated on BCG".[6]
In 1912 Weleminsky, who was then second assistant to Ferdinand Hueppe, the head of the Institute for Hygiene at the German University of Prague, published his discovery of a new treatment for tuberculosis, which he named tuberculomucin (Tbm).[7][8] It was tested on guinea pigs,[7][9] with number 1769 being the first to survive due to the treatment in 1909.[7][10] He also used tuberculomucin Weleminsky[11] (also spelt tuberkulomucin Weleminsky[12] and tuberkulomuzin Weleminsky)[13] to treat cattle which he kept at his country retreat, Schloss Thalheim.
More than 60 papers were published in German describing tuberculomucin's use in humans, but very few of them were read by an English-speaking audience. By the mid-1920s it was known as tuberculomucin Weleminsky and at least two companies were involved in producing and marketing the treatment.[7][note 2] In 1938, Sanders, a Belgian pharmaceutical company, planned to manufacture Tbm and to make it available in Western Europe and other parts of the developed world. However, Weleminsky fled from Prague in 1939, a couple of weeks before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, and these plans and further development of the treatment ceased.[14]
On 4 December 1905 he married Jenny Elbogen (1882–1957), at her parents' country home, Schloss Thalheim, Lower Austria.[note 3] The married couple lived in Prague and at Schloss Thalheim,[1] which Jenny inherited from her father after his death in 1918 and which they ran as a model dairy farm.
They had four children together. Their eldest daughter, Marianne (born 1906), and their son, Anton[note 4] (born 1908), came to Britain just before the Second World War. Two of their daughters emigrated in the early 1930s to Mandatory Palestine where they took new names – Eliesabeth (born 1909) became Jardenah, and Dorothea (born 1912) was known as Leah.[citation needed]
Facing Nazi persecution for being Jewish, Friedrich and Jenny Weleminsky found sanctuary in Britain in 1939.[1][4]
Friedrich Weleminsky died of pneumonia on 1 January 1945 at Fulham Hospital, London[4] and is buried at Golders Green Jewish Cemetery. His wife Jenny, who was 14 years younger, survived him by 12 years. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren now live in Britain, Israel, Australia, Sweden and Germany.[citation needed]
In 2011, following an approach by Weleminsky's eldest granddaughter, Dr Charlotte Jones, a retired general practitioner, a team at the University College London's Department of Science and Technology Studies resumed research on tuberculomucin Weleminsky.[15] Since 2017, Friedrich's granddaughter Judy Weleminsky has been leading this research.[16][17]
