Hirsch, Rachel (1870–1953)

German-Jewish physician, medical researcher, and professor whose major discovery was ignored in her day but found to be scientifically valid almost two generations later and then named the "Rachel Hirsch Effect." Name variations: Rahel Hirsch. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on September 15, 1870; died in London, England, on October 6, 1953; daughter of Mendel Hirsch (1833–1900); had eight sisters and two brothers; never married.

Was the first woman in Prussia to receive the title of Professor of Medicine (1913); fled Germany (1938).

Rachel Hirsch was born into a large Orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, in 1870, a time when hopes were high that, with the creation of a new Germany, the age-old discriminations directed against Jews would soon be only memories. In a large, bustling household of 11 children, Rachel carried on a daily battle to assert herself. Learning was highly respected in her family. Her father Mendel Hirsch was first a professor and later principal of both a private high school and a secondary school (Höhere Töchterschule) for the daughters of Frankfurt's Jewish elite. An imposing family tradition of scholarship and piety had been established by Rachel's paternal grandfather Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888), who was universally recognized by Germany's Jews as the foremost exponent of Orthodox Judaism at a time when Reform currents were strong within their religious community.

Since women remained barred from receiving university education in Germany until the first years of the 20th century, Rachel Hirsch's medical training began in 1898 at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, which had pioneered in awarding medical degrees to women beginning in the 1860s. By the time she transferred to the universities of Leipzig and Strassburg (then Germany, now Strasbourg, France), Germany had begun the process of permitting women's access to institutions of higher education. In July 1903, Hirsch was awarded her medical degree by the University of Strassburg. That same year, she accepted an unpaid position in Berlin at Germany's most prestigious medical center, the Charité Hospital.

Berlin in the first decade of the 20th century was the capital of a powerful but often unsettled nation. Domestic class conflicts and the refusal of France and other countries to accept the German Reich as a genuine world power made German political life tense, and the often unstable behavior of Kaiser Wilhelm II only added to this mood. Meanwhile, average Berliners were noted for their sharp tongues and quick wit, and cultural life in the great and bustling metropolis was often exciting. At the Charité Hospital where Hirsch began her medical career with the double burdens of being both female and Jewish, professional standards were high and often unforgiving. A combination of absolute dedication to the profession of medicine and an almost unfailing eye for detail enabled her to gain the respect of most of her almost exclusively male colleagues. Determined to balance her clinical duties with research work, she achieved distinction in both areas.

In 1906, at the start of her medical career, Hirsch published what would turn out to be her single most important scientific paper. Appearing in the prestigious Zeitschrift für experimentelle Pathologie und Therapie and entitled "On the Occurrence of Starch Grains in the Blood and in Urine," this research paper gives a clear description of a phenomenon which had not been previously observed scientifically. Hirsch was the first researcher to describe the unchanged passage of orally taken starch grains into the blood vessels through absorption from the intestine. What she had discovered was the mechanism whereby corpuscular elements, after having first passed through the lymphatic vessel system, are then finally eliminated from the blood through the renal capillaries. Rather than initiate further research, Hirsch's findings were regarded as erroneous by most of her medical colleagues, and soon her paper was gathering dust on library shelves. Discouraged, she stopped her investigations in this area of physiological medicine. Not until after her death—some 50 years following her discovery—would another researcher working at Berlin's Charité Hospital, Gerhard Volkheimer, return to Rachel Hirsch's investigations, find them to be scientifically accurate and valid, and publish his results. To honor his predecessor, Volkheimer named the process the "Rachel Hirsch Effect."

In 1908, in recognition of her excellence as a clinician, Rachel Hirsch received an appointment as the director of the polyclinic branch of the Charité Hospital's Second Medical Clinic. This major promotion made her responsible for all ambulatory patients who came to the hospital for diagnosis and/or treatment. Despite the heavy administrative burdens she now held, Hirsch continued to publish scientific papers. She also began to interest herself in those areas where medicine and society intersected. In a monograph she published in 1913 entitled Körperkultur der Frau (Woman's Physical Culture), Hirsch provided evidence of strong sympathies for Germany's emerging feminist movement when she asserted with obvious confidence that "the physical and psychic weaknesses of women are not to be regarded as her normal state but rather are the result of bad education and environment…. the more women free themselves from their 'general state of weakness,' the more positive will be their prospects for satisfied and useful lives. When this takes place, men can only benefit from such changes…. Therefore, men should not hinder the women's movement, but rather they should make efforts to advance, encourage and promote it."

In November 1913, Hirsch became the first woman in Prussia to be granted the title of Professor in the discipline of medicine. Unfortunately, in a number of ways the title of Professor represented considerably less than met the eye, given the fact that it was purely honorific and carried with it neither university teaching duties nor a salary. Only two previous women in Prussia, the zoologist Countess Marie von Linden and the bacteriologist Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner , had been awarded the coveted title of Professor by the time Rachel Hirsch also received it. Not until after World War I, in February 1920, when women were finally granted the right to study for the Habilitation degree (a post-doctoral hurdle qualifying one for university teaching duties), would the women of Germany finally be able to enter fully into the university teaching profession. Even then, serious obstacles of discrimination and economic pressures continued, so that by 1929 only 46 German women in all academic disciplines had earned the Habilitation title, and only two of these had been able to achieve full professorial rank in a German university.

In 1919, for reasons not known, Rachel Hirsch terminated her long association with the Charité Hospital to go into private practice in Berlin. In 1920, her name appeared on what would be her last publication, a "therapeutic handbook of electro- and ray therapy." In the late 1920s, she moved her medical practice to the Kurfürstendamm, one of Berlin's best-known and busiest streets. In early 1933, when the Nazi Party came to power, Hirsch was 62 years old. She moved her medical practice to the Meineckestrasse, in a neighborhood that housed the headquarters of many of Berlin's Jewish organizations. By the late 1930s, it was no longer possible for Jewish physicians to earn a livelihood in Germany, and on October 7, 1938, Hirsch arrived in Great Britain as a penniless refugee. She lived in London with one of her sisters and chose not to continue her medical career. She regarded the necessary qualifying examinations, and the prospect of attempting to start up another medical practice when she was almost 70, beyond her capacities.

Hirsch spent much of her time translating German books into English and worked for a while as a laboratory assistant, a job that was far below her skills and experience. With the outbreak of World War II, she was evacuated from London to a resort town in rural Yorkshire. When she returned to London after the war, Hirsch was in her mid-70s and her health, particularly her mental state, was deteriorating. Subject to mood swings and often depressed, she increasingly lost touch with reality and slipped into a state of paranoia. Eventually she had to be brought to Camberwell House, a home for the mentally ill near London. Forgotten by the medical world and rejected by her German homeland, Rachel Hirsch died in London on October 6, 1953.

sources:

Brinkschulte, Eva. "Professor Dr. Rahel Hirsch (1870–1953)—der erste weibliche Professor der Medizin—vertrieben, verfolgt, vergessen," in Eva Brinkschulte, ed. Weibliche Ärzte: Die Durchsetzung des Berufsbildes in Deutschland. 2nd ed. Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1993, pp. 103–113.

Hirsch, Rahel. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von der Glykolyse. Strassburg: C. Müh & Cie., 1903.

——. Körperkultur der Frau. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg Verlag, 1913.

——. Therapeutisches Taschenbuch der Elektro- und Strahlentherapie. Berlin: Fischer's medicinische Buchhandlung H. Kornfeld, 1920.

——. Unfall und innere Medizin. Berlin: J. Springer Verlag, 1914.

Muntner, S. "The Rachel Hirsch Effect," in Korot. Vol. 3, 1964, pp. 337–338.

"Nach der Verdriesslichkeit," in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. June 19, 1996, p. N6.

"Professor Dr. med. Rahel Hirsch," in Hamburger Israelitisches Familienblatt. September 25, 1930.

Pross, Christian. Special Treatment Requested/Nicht misshandeln: Moabit Hospital Berlin, 1920–1933–1945. Berlin: Berliner Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, 1987.

——, and Rolf Winau. Nicht misshandeln. Berlin: Edition Hentrich im Verlag Frölich & Kaufmann, 1984.

John Haag , Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia