Wagner-Jauregg, Julius (1857–1940) AustrianNeu-
rologist, Psychiatrist Julius Wagner was born on
March 7, 1857, in Wels, Austria, to Adolf Johann Wag-
ner. He attended the Schotten gymnasium in Vienna
and in 1880 received his medical degree at the Institute
of General and Experimental Pathology, where he
stayed for two years.
In 1889 he was appointed extraordinary professor
at the medical faculty of the University of Graz. Here
he started his investigations on the connections
between goiter and cretinism, and, based on his
research, the government started selling salt laced with
iodine in the areas most affected by goiter. From 1893
to 1928 he was professor at the University of Vienna.
Wagner’s life work was to cure mental disease by
inducing a fever, after observing that mental patients
improve after surviving certain infections that have
high fevers. In 1917, using malaria inoculation, he was
able to cure syphilis patients of dementia paralytica, or
paresis, caused by syphilis, bringing the disease under
control. He attributed the success of the procedure to
the induced malarial fever, and this discovery earned
him the Nobel Prize in 1927. This is considered the
first example of “shock therapy.”
His main publication was a book titled Verhütung
und Behandlung der progressiven Paralyse durch Impf-
malaria(Prevention and treatment of progressive paral-
ysis by malaria inoculation) in the memorial volume of
the Handbuch der experimentellen Therapie (Hand-
book of experimental therapy) (1931). His other works
include Myxödem und Kretinismusin the Handbuch
der Psychiatrie(1912) and Lehrbuch der Organothera-
pie(Textbook of organotherapy) with G. Bayer (1914).
He published more than 80 papers after he retired in
1928.
Later in life, he devoted himself to research in
forensic medicine and the legal aspects of insanity, and
he assisted in formulating the law regarding certifica-
tion of the insane in Austria. He died on September 27,
1940.Waksman, Selman Abraham(1888–1973) Ameri-
canBiochemist Selman Abraham Waksman was born
in Priluka, near Kiev, Russia, on July 22, 1888, to
Jacob Waksman and Fradia London. He received his
early education from private tutors and school training
in Odessa in an evening school, also with private
tutors.
In 1911 he entered Rutgers College, having won a
state scholarship the previous spring, and received a
B.S. in agriculture in 1915. He was appointed research
assistant in soil bacteriology at the New Jersey Agricul-
tural Experiment Station, and continued graduate work
at Rutgers, obtaining an M.S. in 1916, the year he
became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1918 he was
appointed a research fellow at the University of Cali-
fornia, where he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry the
same year.
He was invited back to Rutgers, and by 1930 was a
professor. When the Department of Microbiology was
organized in 1940, he became professor of microbiology345