Hans Reiter
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Dr. Hans Conrad Julius Reiter (February 26, 1881–1969) was a German physician convicted of war crimes for his medical experiments at the concentration camp at Buchenwald. He wrote a book on "racial hygiene" called Deutsches Gold, Gesundes Leben - Frohes Schaffen.
Reiter was born in Reudnitz near Hessen in Germany. He studied medicine at Leipzig, Wroclaw and received a doctorate from Tübingen on the subject of tuberculosis. After receiving his doctorate, he went on to study at the hygiene institute in Berlin, the Pasteur Institute in Paris and St. Mary's Hospital in London where he worked with Sir Almroth Wright for two years.
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[edit] First World War
During the First World War, Hans Reiter worked as a military physician on the Western Front and in the Balkans, where he served in the 1st Hungarian Army. It was here in 1916 that he reported a German Lieutenant with non-Gonococcal urethritis, arthritis and uveitis. He was not the first person to describe this syndrome, which would later become known as reactive arthritis. In the same year, and quite separately, the triad was reported by Feissinger & Leroy. However, the triad was first reported by Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie (English surgeon 1783-1862), but 2 elements together (arthritis + urethritis) had been known much before then in the 16th century. Reiter erroneously thought the triad to be due to a spirochaete, related to, but distinct from the causative agent of Syphilis. This error probably was influenced by his discovery of the spirochaete cause of Leptospirosis, and a non-pathogenic strain of Treponema related to T. pallidum (the cause of Syphilis). This "Reiter Strain" of treponema enabled drug companies to later develop the "Reiter Complement Fixation Test" for Syphilis.
[edit] 1918 - 1939
After the war ended, Reiter became chief of the hygiene department at Rostock. Hans Reiter was a political man, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime. His career was further boosted when, in 1932, he signed an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. In 1933 he was made department director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Experimental Therapy. In 1936, his meteoric rise continued when he was made director of the health department of Mecklenberg-Schwerin and received an honorary professorship in Berlin. With Johann Breger he wrote a book on racial hygiene - Deutsches Gold, Gesundes Leben - Frohes Schaffen ("German Gold, Healthy Life - Glad Work"). He was also a strong supporter of Hitler's anti-smoking campaign, medically progressive at the time. Reiter was a talented teacher who was popular with his students. He also lauded abroad with an honorary membership of the Royal Society of Medicine in London.
[edit] Second World War
As a member of the SS during the Second World War, Hans Reiter designed typhoid inoculation experiments that killed more than 250 prisoners at concentration camps like Buchenwald. He was an enthusiastic supporter of and participant in enforced racial sterilization and euthanasia. After the Nazis were defeated, he was arrested by the Red Army in Soviet Union occupied Germany and tried at Nuremberg where he was found guilty of his involvement of the deaths of hundreds of inmates at Buchenwald. He was interned at an American prisoner of war camp.
[edit] Late Life
After his release, Reiter went back to work in the field of medicine and research in rheumatology. He died, aged 88, in 1969 at his country estate near Hessen.
[edit] Controversy
In 1977, appalled by his war crimes, a group of doctors began a campaign for the term "Reiter's Syndrome" to be abandoned and renamed "Reactive Arthritis". Now, in 2005, this campaign is beginning to pay off and the term "Reiter's Syndrome" is increasingly anachronistic.
[edit] References
Panush, RS, Wallace, DJ, Dorff, RE, Engleman, EP. Retraction of the suggestion to use the term "Reiter's syndrome" sixty-five years later: the legacy of Reiter, a war criminal, should not be eponymic honor but rather condemnation. Arthritis Rheum 2007; 56:693.
