Maximilian Nitze

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.

What the film says

• Said to have seen an inverted church through a dusty eyepiece, and put the light inside the bladder at the tip of a lens telescope.

  Watch 42:02 in the film VIII. Light

• Quarrelled bitterly with Leiter over the credit for the instrument.

  Watch 42:40 in the film VIII. Light

On the timeline

• 1876: Nitze becomes assistant at the Dresden City Hospital; the dusty-eyepiece story is placed in this year. probable timeline
• 2 October 1877: Nitze, with Alexander Schwede, demonstrates his urethroscope and cystoscope on a corpse at the Pathology Institute in Dresden. 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
• 1879: Nitze describes the method in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, vol. 29, no. 24. probable timeline
• 1880: Nitze, having left Vienna by December 1879, settles in Berlin. probable 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
• 1889: Nitze publishes the Lehrbuch der Kystoskopie, the first cystoscopy textbook, and introduces an irrigation cystoscope; he habilitates in Berlin the same year. timeline
• 1891: Nitze publishes an operating cystoscope with a galvanocautery wire loop for bladder tumours. probable timeline
• 1893-1894: Nitze's photographic cystoscope (1893) and his Kystophotographischer Atlas (1894). timeline
• 1900: Nitze becomes associate professor in Berlin. timeline

Sources