1. Julius Wagner-Jauregg was born Julius Wagner on 7 March 1857 in Wels, Upper Austria, the son of Adolph Johann Wagner and Ludovika Jauernigg Ranzoni.
11 Facts About Julius Wagner-Jauregg
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg attended the Schottengymnasium in Vienna before going on to study Medicine at the University of Vienna from 1874 to 1880, where he studied with Salomon Stricker in the Institute of General and Experimental Pathology.
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Ten years later, in 1902, Julius Wagner-Jauregg moved to the psychiatric clinic at the General Hospital and in 1911 he returned to his former post.
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg was angered by what he considered as the malingering of soldiers who claimed to be too mentally upset to return to the battlefield.
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg applied extreme electric shock therapy to these soldiers, which caused large numbers of deaths.
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg's main publication was a book titled Verhutung und Behandlung der progressiven Paralyse durch Impfmalaria in the Memorial Volume of the Handbuch der experimentellen Therapie,.
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In 1928, Julius Wagner-Jauregg retired from his post but remained active and in good health until his death on 27 September 1940.
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Towards his last days Julius Wagner-Jauregg was influenced by Adolf Hitler's German nationalism, and became an anti-Semite and sympathizer of Nazism.
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg advocated a racial hygiene ideology called eugenics, influencing students such as Alexander Pilcz, who went on to author a standard handbook on racial psychiatry critical of Jews for being prone to mental illness.
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Julius Wagner-Jauregg was an advocate of forced sterilization of the mentally ill and criminal, having endorsed the concept in 1935 while a member of the Austrian Anthropological Society.
11.
Julius Wagner-Jauregg was President of the Austrian League for Racial Regeneration and Heredity, which advocated sterilization for those of inferior genetics.