Emil Abderhalden, Swiss Biochemist

Emil Abderhalden (March 9, 1877 - August 5, 1950) was a Swiss biochemist and physiologist. During World War I, he established a children's hospital and organized the removal of malnourished children to Switzerland. He resumed his research into physiological chemistry and began to study metabolism and food chemistry. He is known for a blood test for pregnancy, a test for cystine in urine, and for explaining the Abderhalden-Kaufmann-Lignac syndrome, a recessive genetic condition. The pregnancy test was determined to be unreliable a few years after its inception. In late 1912 Abderhalden's defensive ferments reaction test was applied to the differential diagnosis of dementia praecox from other mental diseases and from normals by Stuttgart psychiatrist August Fauser and his miraculous claims of success were soon replicated by researchers in Germany and the United States. Despite the worldwide publicity the Abderhalden-Fauser reaction was soon discredited. Abderhalden's work was strongly ideologically slanted: his theory was put to use for human experiments by Mengele to develop a blood test for separating Aryan from non-Aryan individuals. Evidence suggests that Abderhalden was instrumental in ideologically streamlining the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina by having the Jewish members purged and replaced by Nazi sycophants. He died in 1950 at the age of 73

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Biochemist Biochemistry Chemistry Emil Kaufmann Mengele Physiological Physiologist Syndrome

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