Oswald Bumke

Who was Oswald Bumke?

Oswald Bumke was a noted German psychiatrist and neurologist.

Family

Oswald Bumke's parents were solidly middle class. His father, Albert Bumke was the son of a brewer, and his mother Emma was the daughter of a factory owner. Bumke's father was a physician and an assistant to Rudolf Virchow but did not pursue a scientific career. He died when Oswald Bumke was 15 years old. One of his three brothers was born without a left hand and died in a swimming accident, another brother, Erwin Bumke, became a noted jurist.

Career

Bumke studied at the universities in Freiburg, Leipzig, Munich and Halle. On 1 August 1901 he became an assistant physician at the psychiatric clinic and mental hospital in Freiburg, working under the noted psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, one of the most vocal critics of the "natural disease entities" classification of Emil Kraepelin. As is the custom in German universities, in order to be eligible for a professorship Bumke researched and wrote a second thesis or Habilitation. Published in 1904, Bumke's extensive literature review of the evidence for eye-pupil abnormalities in neurological and psychiatric conditions was an attempt to identify potential biomarkers that might be of diagnostic and research significance. Research on eye-movement abnormalities and the abnormal behavior of the pupils was widely researched at that time on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as strong candidates for pathognomonic findings that could be discerned through a routine neurological examination that could confirm a diagnosis of Dementia praecox