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Pr Vincent Danel Herbert Desel

Germany

updated Aug 26, 2010 by Nick Thorp

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Herbert Desel



Overview


View Germany in a larger map Legend: = Government Agency, = NGO, = University, = Professional Society, = Poison Control Center, = Toxic Site.

The formation of toxicology as a scientific discipline in Germany originated with basic research in chemistry and medicine at universities on the one hand and in occupational toxicology programs associated with 19th century industrialization. In academia, lectures on toxicology were presented by Georg Augustin Bertele (1767-1818) at the medical faculty in Landshut. Experimental research on toxic gases was performed by Hermann Eulenberg between 1865 and 1876 in Cologne. The state of the art in toxicology at the end of the 19th century was presented by Rudolf Kobert (1854-1918) in his famous textbook on intoxications first published in 1893 and in an extended form 1902-1906 when he was a professor in Rostock. Equally reknowned is the textbook on toxicology published 1928 by Louis Lewin (1850-1918) a reprint of which appeared in 1992.

Physicians employed by chemical companies were instrumental in formulating the discipline of occupational toxicology in Germany. The first medical officer at BASF was Carl Knaps in 1868, followed by Wilhelm Grandhomme at Farbwerke Hoechst in 1874. In the 1870s, Ludwig Hirt (1844-1907) published a textbook on occupational medicine with a focus on toxic substances at the workplace. In his institute in Würzburg, Karl Bernhard Lehmann (1858-1940) first established threshold values for industrial gases at the workplace in 1884. In 1898, he described chloracne in people working in electrolytic factories. A medical department was founded at the Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (BASF) in 1903 when it became clear that aromatic amines induce bladder cancer in exposed workers. State authorities also began to show concern for toxicological problems, e.g. in the Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt (later Reichsgesundheitsamt, i.e. Imperial Health Office) founded in 1876. Soon, legislation on chemical safety was implemented, e.g. the law on the use of colors harmful to human health in 1887. In 1905, a conference on the instruction of workers about the hazards of toxic substances was held at the central office for labour welfare in Hagen.

The flourishing of toxicological research around 1900 did not, however, result in the establishment of toxicological institutes at German universities. Rather, toxicology was looked upon as a part of pharmacology, and toxicological research was performed in some of the university institutes of pharmacology which were founded in increasing numbers in the early 20th century. Even today, the state-controlled curricula for students of medicine and pharmacy contain pharmacology and toxicology as one common subject.

The first full professorship for toxicology in an independent institute was awarded to Paul Pulewka in Tübingen in 1951, later followed by Herbert Remmer. The German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) in 1960 and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in 1975 called for the foundation of toxicological institutes at all universities, and in the following decades a number of universities complied with this demand. In the 1960s the Institutes of Toxicology in Würzburg (1965, Dietrich Henschler) and Marburg (1966, Wolfgang Koransky) and the Departments of Toxicology in Mainz (1966, Karl-Joachim Netter), Homburg (1967, Karl Pfleger), Kiel (1969, Friedrich Karl Ohnesorge) and at the Institute for Occupational Physiology in Dortmund (1978 Hubert Antweiler, 1982 Hermann Bolt) were established. In the German Democratic Republic, the Institute for Industrial Toxicology in Halle led by Werner Ponsold was founded in 1968. In the 1970s, the Institute for Toxicology and Embryonic Pharmacology in Berlin (1972, Dieter Neubert), the Institute for Toxicology in Düsseldorf (1974, Friedrich Karl Ohnesorge), the Institute for Toxicology in Hannover (1977, Hans Wellhöner), and the Department of Toxicology in Hamburg (1978, Hans Marquardt) came up. Later, university institutes of toxicology were also established in Kaiserslautern, Mainz, Jena, München and Potsdam. In parallel with the foundation of university institutes, a number of toxicological research institutes outside academia or associated to academia emerged, such as the Institute of Toxicology at the GSF in Neuherberg (1975, Helmut Greim). In industry, a number of pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, BASF, Hoechst, Merck and Schering founded toxicological departments in the 1950s and 1960s.

As in other countries, this positive development was reversed in the 1990s, with a diminishment of toxicological research. In 1999, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft published a memorandum critical of the situation. With the advent of REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), the new European Union's chemicals legislation, the need for toxicologists will steeply increase during the next years. This will hopefully cause universities to stop the close-down of toxicological institutes.

A version of this article was published in Information Resources in Toxicology, 4th Edition, Herbert Desel and Regine Kahl, Copyright Elsevier (2009).


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Literature References from TOXLINE (Germany)

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