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Austria – 100th Anniversary of Surgeon Theodor Billroth
1929 Silver 2 Schillings 29mm (11.97 grams) 0.640 Silver (0.2469 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 2844
THEODOR BILLROTH GEB 1829 1929, Head of Dr. Theodor Billroth, left, date below.
2 SCHILLING REPUBLIK OESTERREICH around and within circle of shields.
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Christian Albert Theodor Billroth (26 April 1829 – 6 February 1894) was a Prussian-born Austrian surgeon and amateur musician.
As a surgeon, he is generally regarded as the founding father of modern abdominal surgery. As a musician, he was a close friend and confidant of Johannes Brahms, a leading patron of the Viennese musical scene, and one of the first to attempt a scientific analysis of musicality.
While in Zurich, Billroth published his classic textbook Die allgemeine chirurgische Pathologie und Therapie (General Surgical Pathology and Therapy) (1863). At the same time he introduced the concept of audits, publishing all results, good and bad, which automatically resulted in honest discussion on morbidity, mortality, and techniques – with resultant improvements in patient selection.
He was appointed professor of surgery at the University of Vienna in 1867, in succession to Franz Schuh; there, he practiced surgery as chief of the Second Surgical Clinic at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus (Vienna General Hospital). Though he laid the foundation of his fame at Zurich, it was in Vienna, a larger and more conspicuous theater, that he established himself as the power that he was in the surgical world.
During the Franco-Prussian War, Billroth did excellent work in the military hospital at Mannheim and Weissenburg, treating a variety of horrific battlefield injuries with aggressive and ambitious surgeries; he embodied his experience of war surgery in his Surgical Letters from Mannheim and Weissenburg. He was so impressed by the horrors of war, that he was ever afterwards an ardent advocate of peace. On December 3, 1891, he delivered an address on the care of the wounded in war which made a profound sensation and led to large sums of money being voted by the Austrian legislative chambers for the provision of adequate means of succour for the wounded.
He did not limit himself to surgery only, and conducted extensive research on an ailment that affected many surgery patients at the time: wound fever. His treatise on wound fever, Untersuchungen über die Vegetationsformen von Coccobacteria septica (1874; “Investigations of the Vegetal Forms of Coccobacteria septica”) concluded that the cause was bacterial; Billroth was quick to use antiseptic techniques in his surgical practice, and the number of surgical patients afflicted with wound fever greatly decreased. With the threat of fatal surgical infections lessened through his work and others’, Billroth proceeded to turn his attention to surgery and the pioneering field of altering or removing organs that had previously been considered inaccessible.
An early adopter of the “white coat” (as shown in Seligmann’s c.1890 painting), Billroth was directly responsible for a number of landmarks in surgery; in 1872, he was the first to conduct an esophagectomy, removing a section of the oesophagus and joining the remaining parts together. In 1873, he performed the first laryngectomy, completely excising a larynx. He was the first surgeon to excise a rectal cancer and by 1876, he had performed 33 such operations. By 1881, Billroth had made intestinal surgery seem almost commonplace. But his most famous accomplishment is unquestionably the first successful gastrectomy for gastric cancer. On January 29, 1881, after many ill-fated attempts, Billroth performed the first successful resection for antral carcinoma on Therese Heller, who lived for almost 4 months and died of liver metastases. He accomplished this operation by closing the greater curvature side of the stomach and anatomizing the lesser curvature to the duodenum, in an operation that is still known as the Billroth I to this day.
Billroth’s literary activity was widespread, with the total number of published books and papers of which he was the author numbering about one hundred and forty. He collaborated, with von Pitha in a Textbook of General and Special Surgery (1882). To this, Billroth contributed the section on Scrofulosis and Tuberculosis, Injuries and Diseases of the Breast, Instruments and Operations, Burns, Frostbites, etc.
Billroth passed his restless intellectual spirit to numerous distinguished students, creating the “Billroth School” of followers. No aspect of his profession seemed to escape his intense scrutiny, be it research, teaching, administration, or nursing. He not only had something valuable to say about each but often saw to it that his ideas became concrete reality. In all the spheres he sought to influence, he was guided by a belief in the unity of science and art, and by confidence in his own ability to effect change.
Billroth was instrumental in establishing the first modern school of thought in surgery. He had radical ideas on surgical training, advocating a prolonged surgical apprenticeship on completion of medical studies consisting of preliminary work in hospitals followed by performing operations on cadavers and experimental animals. This would be followed by a 2-3 year assistantship in a surgical department with studies of the surgical literature and the acquisition of advanced practical skills. Among his disciples were luminaries such as Alexander von Winiwarter, Jan Mikulicz-Radecki and John B. Murphy. William Halsted’s pioneer surgical residency program was greatly influenced by Billroth’s own methods of surgical education.
Music
Billroth was a talented amateur pianist and violinist. During his time in Zurich he regularly played string quartet with professional musicians such as Theodor Kirchner and Friedrich Hegar. In 1865 he met Brahms for the first time when the rising composer and pianist played Robert Schumann’s piano concerto and own works in Zurich. After Billroth had moved to Vienna in 1867 they became close friends and shared many musical insights. Brahms frequently sent Billroth his original manuscripts in order to get his opinion before publication, and Billroth participated as a musician in trial rehearsals of many of Brahms’ chamber works before their first performances. Brahms dedicated his first two string quartets, Opus 51, to Billroth.
Billroth and Brahms, together with the acerbic and influential Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, formed the core of the musical conservatives who opposed the innovations of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. In the conflict, known as the War of the Romantics, Billroth supported Brahms, but was always fair and measured in his comments. “Wagner was indeed a very considerable talent in many directions,” he wrote in 1888.
Billroth started an essay called “Wer ist musikalisch?” (“Who is musical?”), which was published posthumously by Hanslick. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to musicality. In the essay, Billroth identifies different types of amusicality (tone deafness, rhythm-deafness and harmony-deafness) that suggest some of the different cognitive skills involved in the perception of music. Billroth died in Opatija, Austria-Hungary, before he could complete the research.
Excelling at both his vocation and his avocation, Billroth never saw science and music as being in conflict. On the contrary, he considered the two to complement each other. “It is one of the superficialities of our time to see in science and in art two opposites,” he wrote in a letter. “Imagination is the mother of both.”
Honours
In 1887 Billroth was made a member of the Austrian Herrenhaus, “House of Lords”; a distinction rarely bestowed on members of the medical profession. In 1888, Theodor Billroth was elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
 Austria, officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.5 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 square kilometres (32,386 sq mi). Austria’s terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and Austrian German in its standard form is the country’s official language. Other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.
 The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of the Reformation, many Northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. The Thirty Years War, the influence of the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of France, the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Napoleonic invasions all weakened the power of the Emperor in the North of Germany, but in the South, and in non-German areas of the Empire, the Emperor and Catholicism maintained control. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria was able to retain its position as one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. Following Napoleon’s defeat, Prussia emerged as Austria’s chief competitor for rule of a larger Germany. Austria’s defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary. After the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Austria was left out of the formation of a new German Empire, although in the following decades its politics, and its foreign policy, increasingly converged with those of the Prussian-led Empire. During the 1914 July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Germany guided Austria in issuing the ultimatum to Serbia that led to the declaration of World War I.
 After the collapse of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria adopted and used the name the Republic of German-Austria (Deutschösterreich, later Österreich) in an attempt for union with Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919. In the 1938 Anschluss, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany.[14] This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies and Austria’s former democratic constitution was restored. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral.
Today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $52,216 (2014 est.). The country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, and is a founder of the OECD. Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro in 1999.
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