Josef Leiter
Viennese surgical instrument-maker; built the 1879 cystoscope and the 1886-1887 lamp cystoscope contested
- Dates
- 1830-1892 (source: Wikipedia (de): Josef Leiter )
- Chapters
- VIII. Light
Contested
Priority for the cystoscope was disputed between Nitze and Leiter. Leiter claimed it for himself; an American account of 1887 (Newell) gave Leiter the main credit; German urology honours Nitze; the instrument now carries both names.
Sources
What the film says
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The Viennese instrument-maker with whom Nitze built the cystoscope shown in Vienna on 9 May 1879, and with whom he then fell out.
On the timeline
- 1855: Josef Leiter opens his own instrument workshop in Vienna, opposite the Poliklinik. timeline
- June to December 1878: Nitze's collaboration with Leiter begins; after the first instruments prove unusable clinically, Nitze moves to Vienna to supervise the work. probable timeline
- 9 May 1879 (November 1879 in one source): Dittel presents the Nitze-Leiter cystoscope, urethroscope and rectoscope on a living patient at the k.k. Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Vienna. timeline
- 1880: Leiter publishes Elektro-endoskopische Instrumente in Vienna, describing the instruments built by Nitze and Leiter. timeline
- 1883: At the International Electrical Exhibition in Vienna, Leiter's attention is drawn to the carbon-filament lamp. timeline
- Late 1886 to 1887: Leiter, with Dittel, and Nitze, with Hartwig in Berlin, each produce incandescent-lamp cystoscopes; in March 1887 Dittel shows Leiter's instruments to the Imperial Medical Society of Vienna. timeline
Sources
Sources
- Wikipedia (de): Josef Leiter Secondary
- EAU History Office: the Nitze-Leiter Collection Museum or society
- Newell 1887, on the electric-light cystoscope (NLM Digital Collections) Primary