Ferdinand Sauerbruch

Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875 to 1951) was a German surgeon best known for his work on negative-pressure chambers for operating on the open chest. Born in Barmen, now part of Wuppertal, he studied medicine at several German universities and graduated from Leipzig in 1902. At Breslau he developed the Sauerbruch chamber, demonstrated in 1904, which made heart and lung operations markedly safer, and in Zurich from 1910 he built his own chamber at the University Hospital. During the First World War he worked with Aurel Stodola on limb prostheses that let a patient use remaining muscle for simple movements. He worked on surgical techniques and diets for tuberculosis in Munich and from 1928 to 1949 headed the surgical department at the Charité in Berlin. His stance toward the Nazi government is still debated: he was never a party member but sat on the Prussian State Council and the Reich Research Council, spoke out against the T4 euthanasia program, and was acquitted by the Allies in 1945 for lack of evidence.