STARKENSTEIN, EMIL

STARKENSTEIN, EMIL (1884–1942), pharmacologist. Born in *Pobéžovice, Bohemia, Starkenstein was professor of pharmacology at the Prague German University from 1920 until 1938. Initially he studied purines, inosite, and metabolism of purines. Later he investigated the metabolism of inorganic substances and the effect of compound drugs in the treatment of pain. His study of seasickness led him to develop an effective counteracting drug. Starkenstein endeavored to further collaboration between the Czech and the German universities of Prague. He resigned at the time of the Sudeten crisis (1938) and moved to the Netherlands in 1939, where he concentrated on research into quinine. He was arrested after the Nazi occupation and killed in the concentration camp of Mauthausen. Starkenstein had a keen interest in the history of pharmacology and of Bohemian Jewry, and published articles on the history of his family (he was a descendant of Eleazar *Loew) and on his native community (see bibliography there). Starkenstein took a leading part in the activities of the territorial lodge of *B'nai B'rith in Czechoslovakia.

He published more than 300 articles. His books include Der Einfluss experimentell-pharmakologischer Forschung auf Erkennung und Verhuetung pharmakotherapeutischer Irrtuemer (1923); Pharmakologie der Entzuendung (1929); and in collaboration with J. Pohl and E.E. Rost: Lehrbuch der Toxikologie (1929).

bibliography:

M. Matoušek and J. Kok, in: Arzneimittelforschung – Drug Research, 14 (1964), 1367–68 (bibl. of articles published in 1939–42 on p. 1368); S.R. Kagan, Jewish Medicine (1952), 219–20; Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte, 2 (1993); S. Hermann, in: hj, 8 (1946), 104.

[Suessmann Muntner]