Der Arzt Albert Schweitzer

This book is based on newly accessed and revised archive material. It aims at re-evaluating Albert Schweitzer’s merits as a tropical clinician and physician. To fulfil this purpose Schweitzer’s biographical and medical vita is illuminated as well as his therapeutic approach towards specific tropical diseases, his claim to meet scientific standards in everyday clinical practice and his interactions with an international network of researchers in Lambaréné and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg. Special focus is put on the issue of medical experiments with human beings and animals against the background of the ethical horizon as charted in the concept of Reverence for Life. Due to his close knit connection of ethical thought on one side and tropical medical practice on the other side, Schweitzer’s heritage comes to light within a tension between these poles and can now, 100 years after the foundation of his hospital in Lambaréné, be freshly valued in its global significance. Thus an Albert Schweitzer emerges who was in the vanguard of an international network of interdisciplinary and transculturally aware tropical medicine holding a focus on science as well as on ethics.