97th DOG Annual Meeting 1999
V288
THE BLINDNESS OF AXEL MUNTHE (1857 - 1949) -
PHYSICIAN OF CAPRI ISLAND
M. Jähne, H. Bynke
Munthe was born in Oskarshamn/Sweden on 31.10.1857. He studied medicine in Uppsala, Montpellier and Paris, where he graduated in 1880. At first he changed between Paris, Naples, Ischia and Capri Island and Rome. His first medical profession was gynaecologist, later he was a neurologist and a fashion doctor. We have to appreciate his work during epidemics, earthquakes and World War I, too. In 1890 a great wish was realized: He acquired the vineyard and the ruin of the San Michele chapel in Anacapri on Capri Island and built his villa "Sun temple of his dreams" and permanent residence.
Because of a malediction in his youth he had to pay a high price in his later life: The malediction of the late blindness. Munthe suffered from a high myopia since his youth, combined with a tuberculosis of the lungs. His right eye has got an ablatio retinae, which was enucleated by Dr. Adolf H. Pagenstecher in Wiesbaden/Germany 1910. Aged 71, he wrote partially blinded, with a typewriter the famous book of San Michele, which gave him world-wide glory.
In 1934 his left eye was operated on cataracta by Prof. Alfred Vogt in Zurich/Switzerland. The visual acuity improved a little. Munthe spent the last 6 years of his life blind as a host in the Royal Palace in Stockholm/Sweden and died on 11.2.1949.
The Bible describes a malediction of Apostle Paulus in the Apostle history 12.13histo, too, which ends with a blindness of a magician.
Augenklinik am HELIOS Klinikum Aue /Sachsen
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