Ernst Gräfenberg

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Ernst Gräfenberg (b. 26 September 1881 in Adelebsen near Göttingen, Germany, d. 28 October 1957 in New York City, USA) was a German-born medical doctor and scientist. He is known for developing the intrauterine device (IUD), and for his studies of the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm.

Gräfenberg studied medicine in Göttingen and Munich, earning his doctorate on 10 March 1905. He began working as a doctor of ophthalmology at the university of Würzburg, but then moved to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Kiel, where he published papers on cancer metastasis (the "Gräfenberg theory"), and the physiology of egg implantation. In 1910 Gräfenberg worked as a gynaecologist in Berlin, and by 1920 was most successful, with an office on the Kurfurstendamm. He was chief gynecologist of a municipal hospital in Britz, a working class Berlin district, and was beginning scientific studies of the physiology of human reproduction at Berlin University.

During the First World War, he was a medical officer, and continued publishing papers, mostly on human female physiology. In 1929 he published his studies of the "Gräfenberg ring", the first IUD for which there are usage records.[1]

When Nazism assumed power in Germany, Gräfenberg, a Jew, was forced in 1933 to resign as head of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics in the Berlin-Britz municipal hospital. In 1934, Hans Lehfeldt attempted to persuade him to leave Nazi Germany; he refused, believing that since his practice included wives of high Nazi officials, he would be safe. He was wrong, and was arrested in 1937 for having smuggled out a valuable stamp from Germany. Margaret Sanger ransomed him from Nazi prison, and he was finally allowed to leave in 1940, whereupon he went to the U.S. and opened a practice in New York City.

Gräfenberg was briefly married to writer Rosie Waldeck.[2]

He died on 28 October 1957 in New York.

[edit] The "G-spot"

He became famous for his studies of woman's genitalia, and human female sexual physiology; published studies include the seminal The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm in 1950, describing female ejaculation, and an erogenous zone where the urethra is closest to the vaginal wall. In 1981 sexologists John D. Perry and Beverly Whipple named that area the Gräfenberg spot, or G-spot in his honour.

While the medical community has not embraced the whole concept of the "G-Spot", Dr. Sanger, Dr. Kinsey, and Drs. Masters and Johnson credit his extensive physiological work.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ "Evolution and Revolution: The Past, Present, and Future of Contraception" (February 2000). Contraception Online (Baylor College of Medicine) 10 (6). 
  2. ^ (German) Matthias David, Frank C. K. Chen, and Jan-Peter Siedentopf, Ernst Gräfenberg: Wer (er)fand den G-Punkt?, Deutsches Ärtzteblatt, November 2005, Seite 498: "Ernst Gräfenberg war für kurze Zeit mit der Schriftstellerin Rosie Waldeck verheiratet." The U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1962 July - December indicate that Rosie Waldeck is also known as Rosie Graefenberg Waldeck, and as "R.G." was author of Prelude to the past; the autobiography of a woman. Time magazine, in its 1942 review of Waldeck's Athene Palace indicates that she is the same person; however, they give the "G" as standing for Goldschmidt, her maiden name.

[edit] External links