Friedrich Weleminsky

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 who, in the early 20th century, created  an alternative treatment for tuberculosis, tuberculomucin Weleminsky. 

Early life and education

He was born into a Jewish family on 20 January 1868 at Golčův Jeníkov in Bohemia, which was then part of the Austrian 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).  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. 

Career

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.  He was appointed to a teaching post in the university's medical faculty as a privatdozent in Hygiene in July 1900. 

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. 

Tuberculomucin Weleminsky

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 as providing "a good review of the voluminous literature accumulated on BCG". 

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).  It was tested on guinea pigs, with number 1769 being the first to survive due to the treatment in 1909.  He also used tuberculomucin Weleminsky (also spelt tuberkulomucin Weleminsky and tuberkulomuzin Weleminsky) 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.<ref group=note>The 1927 advertisement pictured here was issued by the Biopharma pharmaceutical company in Vienna.  It listed the distinctions between  tuberculin and  tuberculomucin Weleminsky (TbM) and invited general practitioners and clinical physicians to seek a brochure about TbM, or trial samples for clinical testing, by completing and returning a postcard in which they were also asked to say if they were already using Tbm and what success they had experienced in using it.  </ref> 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. 

Personal and family life
On 4 December 1905 he married Jenny Elbogen (1882–1957), at her parents' country home, Schloss Thalheim, Lower Austria.  The married couple lived in Prague and at Schloss Thalheim, 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 (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.   Like his wife, Friedrich Weleminsky was a secular Jew and an atheist but he did not share her opposition to Zionism.   Jenny ceased all contact with the two daughters after they left Austria to live in Palestine, but Friedrich communicated with them clandestinely through their sister Marianne. 

Facing Nazi persecution for being Jewish, Friedrich and Jenny Weleminsky found sanctuary in 1939 in Britain. 

Death and legacy

Friedrich Weleminsky died of pneumonia on 1 January 1945 at Fulham Hospital, London 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. 

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. 

Publications
 Basch, K; Weleminsky, Friedrich (1898). " Ueber die Ausscheidung von Krankheitserregern durch die Milch".  Jahrb.  f. Kinderheilk.  47, 105–115
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1899).  Über Sporenbildung bei Dematium pululans de Bary, 7pp. 
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1899).  Ueber Akklimitisation in Grossstädten (On acclimisation in large cities), Oldenbourg: Munich.  Off-print from Archiv für Hygiene, 26: 2
 Jadassohn, J; Pick, Walther; Weleminsky, Friedrich (1903). " Buchanzeigen und Besprechungen".  Archiv für Dermatologie und Syphilis, 64(1): 149–160
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1905). " Zur Pathogenese der Lungentuberkulose (On the pathogenesis of lung tuberculosis)".  Klinische Wochenschrift (Clinical Weekly).   Berlin, Springer-Verlag
Weleminsky, Friedrich (1906)."Ueber Zuchtung von Mikroorganismen in stromenden Nahrboden".  Zentralblatt fur Bakteriologie, Parasitenkunde und Infektionskrankheiten (Central Journal of Bacteriology, Parasitics, Infectious Diseases and Hygiene), 42: 1–7
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1907). " Der Gang von Infektionen in den Lymphbahnen (The course of infections in the lymphatics)".  Klinische Wochenschrift (Clinical Weekly).  Berlin, Springer-Verlag
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1912). " Ueber die Bildung von Elweiss und Mucin durch Tuberkelbacillen".  Klinische Wochenschrift (Clinical Weekly).  28: 1–8  Berlin, Springer-Verlag
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1914). " Tierversuche mit Tuberculomucin".  Klinische Wochenschrift (Clinical Weekly).  18: 1–10  Berlin, Springer-Verlag
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1928). " Filtrable form of tubercle bacilli".  Zentralbl.    f.  d.  gesam.  Tuberk. Forsch.  28(5/6): 305–310
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1930). " Die Immunisierung gegen Tuberkulose mit Calmette's BCG".  Klinische Wochenschrift (Clinical Weekly).  II: 1317–1320 Berlin, Springer-Verlag
 Weleminsky, Friedrich (1930). " Die B.C.G.-Literatur in französischer Sprache".    Zentralbl.    f.  d.  gesam.  Tuberk. Forsch''.   33: 129–135

See also
 Jiří Velemínský
 Judy Weleminsky

Note

References

Further reading

Category:1868 births
Category:1945 deaths
Category:19th-century Austrian people
Category:19th-century Austrian scientists
Category:20th-century Austrian physicians
Category:20th-century Austrian scientists
Category:Austrian medical researchers
Category:Austrian microbiologists
Category:Burials at Golders Green Jewish Cemetery
Category:Charles University in Prague alumni
Category:Charles University in Prague faculty
Category:Czech Jews
Category:Czech medical researchers
Category:Czech microbiologists
Category:Czech pulmonologists
Category:Deaths from pneumonia
Category:Jewish atheists
Category:Jewish educators
Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss
Category:Jewish physicians
Category:Jewish scientists
Category:Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism
Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Category:Medical academics
Category:People from Havlíčkův Brod District
Category:People from Sankt Pölten-Land District
Category:Phthisiatrists
Category:Tuberculosis
Category:Vaccinologists