From Australia’s Jewish past

Arthur Schüller – founder of the Neuroradiology Discipline

Arthur was born on 28 December 1874 in Brno, Moravia, just north of Vienna.

Most of the Schullers in Brno were involved in the textile industry, but Arthur’s father Jonas, was an ear, nose, and throat specialist.  Arthur received a broad education in the humanities at the German Gymnasium in Brno and went on to study medicine at the University of Vienna at seventeen.  He graduated in 1899 with flying colours and received a status award from Emperor Franz Joseph, which was quite rare.

This enabled him to be mentored by Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a Nobel Prize recipient in Physiology and Richard Kraft-Ebbing, a psychiatrist.  Arthur further studied neurology and psychiatry, and in 1901 did a six-month internship in Berlin where he learned about experimental physiology, clinical neurology and the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumours.

On his return to Vienna, he was appointed to the Second Psychiatric Clinic and the Neurology Clinic in the Children’s Hospital, where he became director in 1904.  From 1902, on the advice of Wagner-Jauregg, Arthur went to work with the director of the Central Rontgen Laboratory at the General Hospital in Vienna.  Whilst there he started studying the C-shaped brain structure, located deep within each hemisphere of the brain, near the thalamus.

It is involved in a variety of functions, including motor control, cognitive functions such as memory and learning, and emotional processing.  Arthur’s first notable innovation was the construction of an instrument for reaching and destroying tumours in dogs; this foreshadowed the development of human stereotactic surgery.  This is a minimally invasive surgical technique that uses a three-dimensional coordinate system to precisely target small, deep structures within the body for various procedures, including biopsies, injections, and radiosurgery allowing minimal damage to surrounding healthy tissues.   By 1905, Arthur had published the first systematic survey of the radiology of the skull, which described both normal and pathologic anatomy.

In 1907, a year after becoming a university lecturer, having completed his thesis, he was entitled to teach and receive student fees.  From 1908, he was head of the Nerve Department in the Franz Josef Ambulatorium in Vienna.   It is his work in forming the discipline of Neuroradiology that was his outstanding contribution to medicine.

Arthur’s animal experiments led to his recommendation in 1910 of a surgical procedure to relieve intractable, unilateral pain by interrupting the pain-conducting pathways in the spinal cord’s anterolateral column for people with uncontrollable pain.  In 1912 and 1918, his work was published and became the standard neuroradiology textbook of the time.  Two years later, he was awarded the title of ‘professor extraordinarius’ for his work with nervous and mental diseases of the skull.

He then became an official university lecturer on the civil service payroll and the youngest member of the medical faculty.  He continued with his experimental work in the laboratory, which led to innovations for treating hemiplegia, which is caused by brain damage or spinal cord injury and paralysis on one side of the body.  This innovation was later developed in the United States as a surgical procedure for the relief of Parkinson’s and other conditions.

In the new Republic of Austria following World War I, Arthur was fortunate to retain his position as chief neurologist and continued to accept referrals on skull cases. His grasp of English and skill in teaching attracted students from other countries to attend his postgraduate courses.

His research made him the pre-eminent authority in the German-speaking world on the radiology of the skull and brain, particularly after the publication of his two books. His contact with US colleagues and the translation of his second book into English earned him international reputation.  In the 1930s, he lectured in Europe, the UK and the US, and doctors from around the world came to Vienna to learn from him.   At the Vienna Medical School, he made significant contributions to developing courses for international graduates. These courses prompted the establishment of the American Medical Association of Vienna to handle almost 12,000 American doctors who enrolled between 1921 and 1938.

He was invited to lecture all over Europe and America.  Two weeks after he published his paper on the radiologic findings of epilepsy in children (26 February 1938), Nazi Germany annexed Austria between 11 and 13 March, in an event known as the Anschluss which meant that Austria was incorporated into the German Reich.  Being Jewish, Arthur was expelled from the university on 22 April 1938.

In 1939 Arthur and his wife fled to Oxford England, to avoid Nazi persecution.  Arthur spent three months working in Oxford and was a prominent member of the First International Conference of Neuroradiologists, held in July 1930 in Antwerp.  In the first week of August 1939, Arthur and his wife left London to start a new life in Melbourne in a journey that took over a week with thirty stops to reach Darwin, then Brisbane and eventually Melbourne.

Their arrival was noted by the Australian press.  Arthur had been invited by a former student, John O’Sullivan to join him in the Radiology Department at St Vincent’s Hospital.  He also had the opportunity to work with Frank Morgan, the first specialist neurosurgeon in Australia.

For the remainder of Arthur’s life, he spent time working at St Vincent’s Hospital, working in the Radiology Department with John O’Sullivan, viewing all skull x-rays, and attending rounds and surgeries with Frank Morgan.  It was not until 1946 that the Medical Board of Victoria allowed him to practise.  He was lent rooms where he saw patients who were referred to him.  He became an honorary member of the Anatomy Department of the University of Melbourne and the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia.    In 1949, although he declined to go, he was elected in absentia as President of the Second Neuroradiologicum Symposium, held in Rotterdam and his paper submitted was given pride of place. Arthur continued to be involved with St Vincent’s Hospital until his eighties.

Whilst it seemed that Arthur was always working, he was interested in music, played the violin in the University of Vienna Medical Orchestra, and it was at the Vienna Opera that he was introduced to his wife, whom he married in 1906.  Unfortunately, their two sons, families and Arthur’s mother remained in Vienna and were deported to concentration camps and did not survive.

Arthur died from Parkinson’s disease on 31 October 1957 in Heidelberg, Melbourne.   He has been regarded as the founder of the Neuroradiology Discipline.  In addition to his contributions to neurosurgical procedures, he is associated with three bone diseases related to osteoporosis and Paget’s disease.  In Arthur’s lifetime, he published 300 books, papers, and short articles, and he continued to publish scientific papers until 1950.

In his honour, the Austrian Society of Neuroradiology (OEGNR) awards the annual Arthur Schüller prize.  Keith Henderson, a colleague of Arthur’s at the hospital, published a book, Arthur Schüller, Founder of Neuroradiology: A Life on Two Continents.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Wikipedia; Austrian Society of Neuroradiology; Neurosurgical Society of Australasia; Australian Encyclopaedia of Science and Medicine; National Library of Australia; WordPress; Keith Henderson’s book published in February 2021 by Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne.

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