J R Coll Physicians Edinb 2005; 35:75–82 Paper © 2005 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Adolf Hitler’s medical care D Doyle 7 Kaimes Road, Edinburgh, Scotland ABSTRACT For the last nine years of his life Adolf Hitler, a lifelong hypochondriac Correspondence to D Doyle, OBE, had as his physician Dr Theodor Morell. Hitler's mood swings, Parkinson’s disease, FRCPE, 7 Kaimes Road, Edinburgh, gastro-intestinal symptoms, skin problems and steady decline until his suicide in EH12 6JR 1945 are documented by reliable observers and historians, and in Morell’s diaries. The bizarre and unorthodox medications given to Hitler, often for undisclosed tel. +44 (0)131 334 3168 reasons, include topical cocaine, injected amphetamines, glucose, testosterone, e-mail [email protected] estradiol, and corticosteriods. In addition, he was given a preparation made from a gun cleaner, a compound of strychnine and atropine, an extract of seminal vesicles, and numerous vitamins and ‘tonics’. It seems possible that some of Hitler’s behaviour,illnesses, and suffering can be attributed to his medical care. Whether he blindly accepted such unorthodox medications or demanded them is unclear. KEYWORDS Adolf Hitler, cocaine, methamphetimine, Parkinson’s disease, sulphonamides,Theodor Morell LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS central nervous system (CNS), ear, nose and throat (ENT), electrocardiogram (ECG) DECLARATION OF INTERESTS No conflict of interests declared. It is often said that people get the politicians and the not only from the dairies of his physician,1 but from doctors they deserve. Is it also true that politicians, or several scholarly biographies of him and the recorded at any rate despotic dictators, get the doctors they observations of his closest colleagues, as well as deserve? What can it have been like serving as Hitler’s transcripts of the Nuremberg trials.2-6 Apparently he personal physician? What sort of a man or woman was a lifelong hypochondriac with a dread of cancer and would accept such a position? What sort of patient was certain that, like his father, he would suffer an early Hitler and what made him choose, and remain loyal to, death. On his 50th birthday and still in reasonably good his doctor? Did his medical care contribute to his health he remarked, ‘in a few years I shall be physically behaviour? This paper explores these questions and perhaps mentally too, no longer up to this’.2 He (prominent Nazis mentioned are listed in Appendix 1). never travelled without his personal medicine chest, and was usually accompanied by a doctor. By his own ADOLF HITLER account, since childhood he had suffered recurrent attacks of abdominal colic with alternating diarrhoea and The salient facts about Hitler’s political life and influence constipation and what he described as ‘gas, clearly are so well known they need no detailed repetition related to episodes of stress or crisis’.1 The clinical here. Born on 20 April 1889 in Austria, he was awarded features suggest spastic colon or irritable bowel the Iron Cross in the First World War; he founded and syndrome but no such terms appear in records. Hitler led the National Socialist Party (Nazis), became German treated the condition with a patent medicine the base of Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and led Germany into which was a gun-cleaning oil used in the First World War the Second World War. As a result of war and his anti- trenches and subsequently found to be toxic, producing Semitic ‘Final Solution for the Jews’ (the holocaust) he headaches, diplopia, dizziness and tinnitus.2 On these was responsible for, or implicated in, an estimated 50 occasions he had eczema, principally on his legs, and million deaths. He shot himself in Berlin on 30 April throughout his life suffered from insomnia, depression 1945 the day after marrying his long-time companion, and panic attacks and, from 1921, a recurrent eye Eva Braun who, sitting on the couch beside him, inflammation of some kind. committed suicide with cyanide. Their bodies were then burned on his orders but a skull was subsequently Some have suggested that he had tertiary syphilis, retrieved by the Russians and later subjected to forensic accounting for his choice of Morell, a venereologist, as examination which confirmed from dental records that his personal physician but serological tests done by HISTORY it was Hitler’s.1 Morell did not confirm it.1 There is doubt about his sexual ability and libido, partly because he kept his We now know much about his health and medical care, friendship with Eva Braun secret until the final weeks of 75 D Doyle life, often going for months without making any effort to However, instead of embarking on a career in that see her,never allowing her to be seen in public with him, specialty he served for a year as an assistant doctor with sometimes not inviting her to join guests at his Bavarian three different German cruise lines before buying a retreat,2–5 and partly because Morell regularly gave him practice in Dietzenbach near Offenbach. War broke out testosterone injections.1 and for the next four years he served at the front, then as a prison medical officer at Ohrduf. There is no record Always a non-smoker and abstemious about his food of him returning to the practice he had bought or though not a vegetarian in his younger days, he became pursuing further studies, but in January 1919 he moved a vegan, as well as tee-total, after the suicide of a much- to Bayreuther Strasse in Berlin where he stayed for 17 loved niece and, according to his cook, ate an even more years, benefiting from the money his wealthy actress wife unhealthy diet after he came under the care of Morell. Johanna Moller brought to their marriage which took place in 1920. They had no children. A man acknowledged by many who met him as having considerable charisma and even charm (particularly with Morell set about building up a lucrative, ‘up-market’ and women and children), he was self-opinionated yet, at the unconventional practice, receiving invitations to become same time, insecure enough to surround himself with personal physician to the Shah of Persia and, on another ‘yes men’ from whom he demanded unquestioning occasion, physician to the King of Romania, both of which obedience and loyalty. He dreaded dying before he had he declined. By 1932, he was making the equivalent of completed what he regarded as his messianic mission for £12,000 per annum (a princely sum in today’s money, Germany. He was a man capable of breaking down in approximately £250,000) and putting at the top of his tears at the death of his chauffeur, Julius Schredck, or a headed paper ‘X-rays, high frequency, diathermy, radiation, favourite dog, but without emotion about the deaths of galvanic treatments, urinalyses and blood serologies’.1 millions. As the psychiatrist Hasselbach has said of him he ‘could hate ferociously while at the same time be Early in 1933 his practice suffered when it was observed totally forgiving towards those he loved’.2 that many of his patients were Jewish and he himself could have been mistak en for a Jew because of what he It was during one of these episodes of abdominal colic, described as his ‘swarthy looks’. He was certainly not a eczema and fear of death that he met Morell and invited Jew. In April 1933, he joined the Nazis and by 1935 had him to be his personal physician. From that day in 1936 moved to the prestigious address of 216 until a few days before his Hitler’s death, Morell was at Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, his name plate showing him his beck and call every day, responsible not only for as a general practitioner, but actually describing himself Hitler but also, on occasions, in attendance on others of and practising as a venereologist. He might have the Nazi leaders and distinguished visitors to Berlin. He remained there for the rest of his professional life had treated Speer, Heydrich and Goebbels (see Appendix 1) he not, in spring 1936, been asked to treat a friend of and recommended a doctor for Mussolini. When Dr Hitler,the famous photographer Heinrich Hoffman, who, Emil Hácha, the Czech State President fainted on being after his wife left him, lapsed into alcoholism and bullied by Hitler and Goring, it was Morell who homosexuality. He contracted gonorrhoea, which resuscitated him with an injection.2, 5, 6 Morell claimed he cured. The photographer’s secretary and model was the seventeen-year-old Eva Braun, who 1, 2 DR THEODOR GILBERT MORELL1 was to become Hitler’s secret mistress. We know of eight doctors who attended on Hitler on That Christmas he and his wife were two of many guests various occasions during his time as Fuhrer of Nazi invited to party at the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat. Germany, but only one was with him almost all the time Taking him aside one day Hitler showed him his legs, from 1937 until a few days before his suicide in April 1945. swathed in bandages and ointment because of chronic He was Theodor Morell, born on 22 July 1886, the second eczema and told him of the recurrent abdominal spasms son of a primary school teacher of Huguenot descent in and fits of utter exhaustion often alternating with Trais-Münzenberg, a small village in Upper Hesse. periods of deep depression all of which he had endured for years. Hitler asked if Morell could help him In junior school he did not excel and is said to have whereupon the doctor said he would cure the skin suffered from recurrent abdominal pains, but, having condition in less than a year and, with that, Hitler invited done exceptionally well in secondary school, he went on him to be his full-time doctor.