Schindler, Rudolf b. May 10, 1888; Munich, Bavaria d. September 6, 1968; Munich, Bavaria
German American pioneer in endoscopic technology. Schindler, the son of a German Jewish banker, received his medical doctor degree when he turned twenty-one. He participated in World War I as a doctor and pathologist and was awarded several medals.
During this time he was also infected with dysentery from which he never fully recovered. It is possible that this illness might have caused his interest in chronic abdominal diseases.From 1919 to 1934 Schindler worked in Munich, first at the Municipal Hospital Munich-Schwabing and later in private practice. After four years of assistantship,
he already had achieved international fame for publishing the first extensive and illustrated textbook on gastroscopy. The endoscopic pictures were produced by a painter who witnessed the procedure; Schindler and (at least) one of his colleagues immediately corrected mistakes and the picture was finished at the end of the session. The resulting pictorial atlas attracted more than 300 colleagues from all continents to visit Schindler’s gastroenterological-endoscopic practice throughout the 1920s. Schindler developed a rigid gastroscope that remained the most important instrument for about 10 years. He was able to demonstrate the safety of this instrument in more than 400 procedures, performed without complications.
Between 1928 and 1932 Schindler, together with the Berlin engineer Georg Wolf, developed the first semiflexible gas- troscope, which became the standard instrument for more than twenty-five years. The heart of this new tool was the steel wire spiral that contained the optical system. This spiral was surrounded by two rubber layers that provided enough space for a power supply for the light bulb at the tip of the instrument. It also facilitated pumping air into the stomach. The optical system consisted of a column of fifty tiny magnifying lenses linked to a prism near the tip.
This semiflexible instrument caused fewer complications and allowed for a much better picture of the stomach. However, patients still needed to be constrained and to hold their heads rigidly back during the entire procedure. To make the procedure bearable, the patient’s throat and mouth were anaesthetized with cocaine, and the patient was injected with an opiate.After the Nazis took power in Germany, Schindler was arrested because of a denunciation in February 1934 and spent about two months in prison. In the summer of 1934, however, he was allowed to leave Germany and immediately immigrated to Chicago. For many years, Schindler became the leading expert on stomach endoscopy in the United States. Hundreds of students came to Chicago in order to learn from him, thus making Chicago the center of gastric endoscopy in the United States. In 1937 Schindler received the Gold Medal of the American Medical Association for his gastritis research and in 1941 he was appointed president of the American Gastroscopic Club, of which he was the main founder. This club was the first worldwide association of endoscopic gastroenterologists.
In 1942 a conflict over the interpretation of gastritis between Schindler and the several-years-younger and less-illustrious Walter L. Palmer erupted. Palmer was the head of the gastroenterological department at the University of Chicago and in charge of Schindler’s contract. While Schindler, based on his experience with patients, considered gastritis an illness, Palmer considered it, based on his literary-statistical research only, a hypothesis. When Schindler’s contract expired in 1943, it was not renewed. One of the causes for this decision, however, was probably linked to the accidental damaging of the stomachs of three patients during gastroscopical procedures that occurred to Schindler in 1936. These accidents caused a gradual cooling down of the professional relationship between both men.
In 1943 Schindler went to California and accepted a position at the Loma-Linda University in Los Angeles.
In 1953 the American Gastroscopic Club honored him with the creation of the Schindler Award.One year after the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy was founded as the successor organization to the American Gastroscopic Club, Schindler became the first candidate to receive the award named after him. His stay in California was interrupted by a two-year visiting professorship in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The illness of his first wife, Gabriele, forced them to return to Long Beach, California. Gabriele Schindler had worked as an endoscopy assistant with her husband since his tenure in Munich. After her death, Schindler returned to Germany in 1965.
Peter K. Schafer and Tilman Sauerbruch See also Intellectual Exile; Jewish Refugee
Scientists
References and Further Reading
Schafer, Peter K., and Tilman Sauerbruch.
“Rudolf Schindler (1888—1968) ζVater der Gastroskopie.” Z Gastroenterol 42 (2004): 550-556.