Rudolf Richard Buchheim, the founder of pharmacology

Abstract

Today, the University of Tartu (earlier Dorpat) belongs among the 250 best universities of the world. Its international team of pharmacologists uses powerful confocal microscopes to study apoptosis and cell death within an international consortium. Science is working on solutions to fight Alzheimer disease, which is a torture for humankind. For this to happen today, the foundation was laid by scientists of previous centuries who deserve our great respect, all of them together and everyone separately. Johannes Piiper, a well-known professor of physiology, once told me in a conversation that articles should be published in every 10 years about the men who have served as examples for the science of the present-day world and about the conditions in which their research was done. It is essential that researchers working in modern laboratories would not forget in their smugness that the laboratory has not always been a warm and well-lit room full of expensive technology, and not always have millions been allocated for research grants. Electricity came to Dorpat as late as in 1892. In the harsh Estonian winter, ice sometimes covered the inner walls of the Old Anatomical Theatre. Dorpat received railway connection in 1876. When I have made presentations in American countries, I have repeatedly been asked why the pharmacologists of the University of Tartu have not published an illustrated biography of Rudolf Richard Buchheim. As I have worked in the rooms the construction of which was directed by R. Buchheim as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, I am trying to correct this shortcoming at least to some extent. I have written about Buchheim earlier, but then the print volume was limited. In this article, I have attempted to fill the gaps where the earlier materials have been erroneous or incomplete. So, the article will explain the formation of the large family of Buchheims. Several articles have given the impression that when Buchheim arrived in Dorpat, there were no facilities at all, and, therefore, he founded the laboratory in the basement of his dwelling house. This article will also bring clarity to that. Through O. Schmiedeberg’s memories, we will see the great difficulties with which Buchheim’s viewpoints broke through and were accepted. The question where Buchheim’s laboratory was situated after Buchheim moved house in 1852 until the completion of the annex to the Old Anatomical Theatre in 1860 will also be answered. The article also brings some clarity about R. Buchheim’s children. For the first time, it has been summed up how R. Buchheim is commemorated in different towns and countries. The article includes photos from Estonian and foreign archives; some photos have also been received from cooperation partners. Photos available on the Internet as freeware have also been used. The mid-nineteenth century brought a whole constellation of talented scientists to the German-language University of Dorpat (now Tartu in Estonia, founded 1632) on the outskirts of the Russian Empire. They did not tinker on their own but were engaged in successful cooperation. Thus, the celebrities who happened to work in Tartu simultaneously included Professor of Anatomy and Physiology Georg Friedrich Karl Heinrich Bidder; founder of physiological chemistry, chemist Carl Ernst Heinrich Schmidt; and Rudolf Richard Buchheim whom Professors E. A. Carus and F. Bidder had invited to Tartu to work as Head of the Department of Materia Medica, Dietetics and History of Medicine. Together, the three talented and hardworking scientists cleared the path to research-based medicine and wrote their names into the history of world medicine forever. By introducing chemical analysis and animal experiments, R. Buchheim laid the foundation to scientific pharmacology.