The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1927
Julius Wagner-Jauregg
Presentation Speech by Professor W. Wernstedt, Dean of the Royal Caroline Institute, on December 10, 1927
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies
and Gentlemen.
Fibiger won his laurels in the
field of theoretical medicine, researching into the cause of a
specific disease. Turning to the work that led Wagner-Jauregg to
the list of Nobel Prize winners, we enter the field of practical
medicine, or more exactly, the wide field where the means of
healing diseases are sought. The disease in the treatment of
which Wagner-Jauregg acquired such great merit is general
paralysis, a mental disease which, on a syphilitic background,
leads to a fatal idiocy and paralysis. It is therefore a very
serious and moreover not uncommon disease.
Up to the arrival of Wagner-Jauregg, we were practically without
any means of healing general paralysis, or even of influencing
its course and outcome substantially and with any certainty. The
inaccessibility of the paralysis to treatment, and its
development leading as a rule directly to death within a few
years even came to be regarded as a criterion whether the
diagnosis of paralysis had been correct in cases where at first
doubt had prevailed in this respect. It should be clear that
whoever is successful in finding a means to eliminate such a
disease, has thereby made an achievement of the greatest benefit
to mankind. Wagner-Jauregg has performed such a deed and it is
for this that he is to be rewarded today with the Nobel Prize for
Medicine for the year 1927.
How then did Wagner-Jauregg proceed to heal the unfortunate
victims of this terrible disease? There is a saying «one
must expel evil with evil» that might aptly have been coined
as a motto for his treatment of paralysis. He healed the mental
patients by infecting them with another disease-malaria.
For a long time, ever since Hippocrates, it has been observed
that every now and then, mental patients were healed or
favourably influenced, when they were attacked by a fever. It was
this ancient observation, which Wagner-Jauregg also made himself,
that excited the idea in him, whether one could not obtain an
effective method of treatment for chronic mental patients by
infecting them with a febrile disease.
Even forty years ago, as a young lecturer at the University of Vienna,
Wagner-Jauregg put forward his ideas in the professional press.
At that time his proposals seemed to have attracted no attention,
and he himself was for a long time prevented from putting them
into practice. In 1917 the opportunity was first presented to him
of realizing his ideas, in that in this year he injected nine
persons suffering from paralysis with the infectious blood of
malaria patients.
Wagner-Jauregg had not been deluding himself in his expectations.
The infected patients developed malaria, their mental illness was
favourably affected, and in three of the nine recovery was
practically complete. The choice of the infecting disease which
he had hit upon was also fortunate. The form of malaria (tertian
fever) which he used is, if correctly treated, a relatively
innocuous disease, which can always be cured by means of quinine
treatment. It therefore requires no further motivation that under
such conditions the method must be eminently well adapted, and
that its practical application would be desirable in the highest
degree.
The successful experiments of Wagner-Jauregg have been repeated
throughout the whole world. Several thousand unfortunate people
in various clinics and asylums in Europe and elsewhere - as well
as in our own country - have received the benefits of this
treatment during the last few years. Reports vary somewhat, but
on one point they are unanimous, namely that never before have
such remarkable results in the treatment of general paralysis
been obtained. On the one hand, before Wagner-Jauregg it was
possible to observe that about 1% of patients showed a «full
remission» - that is to say, they recovered for a shorter or
longer time, whether on account of treatment applied or by
spontaneous remission, may be left an open question. With
Wagner-Jauregg's malaria treatment on the other hand, it became
apparent that on the average a complete cure from a practical
point of view, and the ability to work, were obtained in no less
than 30% of cases, and the best statistics even speak of nearly
50%. Approximately a third of all paralytics, formerly virtually
condemned without exception for the rest of their lives to fall a
burden on their relatives or society as useless beings, can,
thanks to and as a consequence of the malaria treatment, count on
being restored to a full life, fulfilling like others their
duties in society.
For how long? On this it is impossible to speak with complete
certainty, but the statistics are promising. It will suffice here
to mention one set. I choose Wagner-Jauregg's own most recent
compilation, as the cases observed for the longest time are found
there. Wagner-Jauregg who in the course of years has treated over
a thousand cases with malaria, took into consideration in these
statistics only those cases, 400 in all, where at least two years
had elapsed since the treatment. In spite of the length of time
for which they were observed, varying between two and ten years,
Wagner-Jauregg finds that about 30% - among them all three
patients who had already recovered in 1917 (that is, ten years
ago) - have enjoyed constant good health. This is quite
remarkable, because previously, as stated, among the 1% of
complete remissions observed, this lasted, as a rule, only a few
months.
It is now quite clear from this that Wagner-Jauregg has given
us a means to a really effective treatment of a terrible disease
which was hitherto regarded as resistant to all forms of
treatment, and incurable.
If it be considered that paralysis is, moreover, a disease which
in general attacks persons between 32 and 45 years of age, and as
a rule men - men, that is, in the best years of their lives and
at an age when they are usually family providers and, as a rule,
fathers of minors - it will be understood what a catastrophe for
the whole family an attack by such a disease generally means. At
the present time the great value of Wagner-Jauregg's achievement
surely stands painted before our mind's eye in clearer colours
than dry numbers can paint it. It is to such a one, who must be
counted as one of the great discoverers and benefactors of
mankind, that Alfred Nobel wished his prize to be awarded.
Julius Wagner-Jauregg, my most honoured
colleague. As a young doctor the idea was born in your mind that
by injecting the chronically insane with a febrile infectious
disease it might be possible to cure the sick mind. After a long
period of waiting came the moment when you were able to realize
this idea. You injected malaria into human beings who were
suffering from one of the most terrible mental diseases, one
which up till now was thought to be incurable, and you led many,
who were otherwise irretrievably lost, back to life and fit for
work. Certainly, for you, the best reward for your life's work is
the knowledge that you have given an unusually blessed gift to
mankind, and the sense of the gratitude of the wretches whom you
have made happy, as also of their families.
Recognition by the profession, the scientific world, is
certainly, however, not a thing to be despised. The Caroline
Institute has extended to you, in acknowledgment of your
achievement just mentioned, the highest distinction that it has
at its disposal, in that it has awarded you the Nobel Prize. I
have the great honour to invite you to step before the King, and,
accompanied by the heartfelt good wishes of the Institute and the
gratitude and admiration of thousands, to receive your prize from
the hands of His Majesty.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1927
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