The wicked do not always prosper

When I was a student in Vienna in the 1930s great emphasis was laid on medical ethics. Our first lectures were in the anatomical institute where the inscription above the professor’s lectern read in large letters: Primum non nocere (firstly, do no harm). Among other advice we were told never to admit to patients that they had a fatal illness, still less that they were about to die. It was assumed that they could not take such information, that they would be driven to despair and their remaining time would be a constant torment once any hope for recovery was extinguished. Even when patients asked whether they were about to die, we had to deny it.

During the clinical part of my course I attended the lectures of Professor Hans Eppinger. He was the head of the first medical clinic in the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, the university hospital. He was a brilliant man, well known not only as a clinician and a researcher, but also for his dry and impersonal attitude. One day he brought a patient into the lecture theatre and introduced him to the students with the following words which I still remember after 60 years: “Nephritis can be compared with a tragedy in five acts and”—pointing to the patient—“this is the final act of the tragedy.” The patient broke down in tears and was obviously distressed throughout the demonstration. We were all shocked by Eppinger’s brutal and unfeeling manner and talked about it among ourselves for some time afterwards.

I had not thought about Eppinger for decades until I came across his name twice recently. Looking through the list of unclaimed secret Swiss bank accounts which was published a few months ago I saw the name of Hans Eppinger. Why had he not claimed his money more than 50 years after the end of the war? The answer became obvious from the other publication.¹ During the Nuremberg trials Eppinger was brought to court for conducting “medical experiments” on Jewish prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp and committed suicide.

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