1864 - 1932 (68 years)
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Name |
Victor Eisenmenger |
Birth |
29 Jan 1864 |
Vienna AT |
Gender |
Male |
Death |
11 Dec 1932 |
Vienna AT |
Notes |
- VICTOR EISENMENGER
[Extract from Wikipedia, published 19 Jun 2022]
EARLY LIFE
Eisenmenger was born in Vienna in 1864, the son of portrait painter August Eisenmenger and his wife Emma. Victor Eisenmenger had two brothers, a well-known engineer named Hugo and a civil servant in finance named Ewald.
Eisenmenger enjoyed art and natural science, but, as he put it, "An artistic career and a study of natural science were both denied to me, the former because my talent was not sufficiently pronounced, the latter because I was forced to earn my living as soon as possible. Thus, I decided to study medicine." He hoped that a medical career would satisfy his curiosity in science and also allow him to teach others. He graduated from medical school at the University of Vienna in 1889.
MEDICAL CAREER
Early career
After beginning his career as an unpaid assistant surgeon at a Viennese clinic, Eisenmenger secured a position at the laryngology clinic of Leopold von Schrötter in 1894. By the following year, Eisenmenger was suffering from poor health. von Schrötter, who had become something of a father figure to Eisenmenger, arranged for him to become the personal physician to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis. von Schrötter thought that such a position would be less physically taxing for Eisenmenger than other positions in medicine.
Service to Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Eisenmenger was the personal physician to the archduke as well as to Charles I of Austria. He worked for the archduke from about 1895 until Ferdinand's assassination in June 1914. "You and the valet are my only friends," Ferdinand once told Eisenmenger.
Eisenmenger wrote Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand (Archduke Franz Ferdinand), a 200-page memoir published by Amalthea Verlag [de] about his time spent with the Archduke. The book was rather critical of the Archduke. Even before it was published, the work generated some controversy among Viennese physicians because Eisenmenger included information that was thought to violate standards of doctor-patient confidentiality.
Eisenmenger married the former Anna Hoberg, and they had two daughters, Anna and Hilde. Eisenmenger's wife was also connected to royalty. When Archduchess of Austria Infanta Maria Theresa of Portugal arranged to sell the Napoleon Diamond Necklace (worth US $450,000 at the time) in the U.S., she received only a few thousand dollars in return, so she sent Anna Hoberg Eisenmenger to the U.S. to recover the necklace. Archduke Leopold of Austria, Prince of Tuscany was jailed on a grand larceny charge in the matter, but he was acquitted at trial.
EISENMENGER'S SYNDROME
In an 1897 article in a German medical journal, Eisenmenger described signs of low blood oxygen levels (including a bluish hue to the skin and nail clubbing) in a 32-year-old man who had been born with a ventricular septal defect. Eisenmenger had seen the patient during his time working with von Schrötter.
Since the 1950s, as the understanding of heart and lung disease has evolved, Eisenmenger's syndrome is the name given to the situation in which a cardiac defect causes too much blood flow to the lungs, which in turn causes changes to the blood vessels in the lungs (pulmonary hypertension) and a reversal of blood flow so that now there is insufficient flow to the lungs.
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Person ID |
I31 |
Flack Genealogy |
Last Modified |
31 Jul 2022 |
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Documents |
| The Evolution of Eisenmenger’s Eponymic Enshrinement
by Clyde Partin, MD Overview of Victor Eisenmenger's life, his congenital heart defect (later known as the "Eisenmenger Syndrome") and service to the Archduke Francis Ferinand as his personal physician (heir presumptive to the Austria-Hungary Empire, assassinated in 1914 in Sarajevo, the precipatating event to World War I) |
| BARON EISENMENGER, COURT PHYSICIAN, DEAD
Medical Adviser to Late Archduke Francis Ferdinand and Ex-Emperor Charles.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. VIENNA, Dec. 11.—Baron Victor Eisenmenger, former personal physician to the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the former Emperor Charles, died at the age of 69 after an operation.
Victor Eisenmenger was a son of August Eisenmenger, painter and professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Vienna. His brother, Hugo E. Eisenmenger of 111 South Ninth Avenue, Mount Vernon, N. Y., is an electrical engineer of international reputation who has been associated with the New York Edison Company since 1921.
The close relations of the Eisenmengers with the former Austrian royal family were made evident in New York in the Spring of 1930 when the Baroness Anna Eisenmenger, wife of the physician arrived with authority from the Archduchess Marie Therese to represent her in the tangled proceedings that followed the alleged unauthorized sale here of the historic diamond necklace of the Archduchess. The Baroness was successful in her mission, receiving from the purchaser the gems and their authenticating documents. |
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