We'd like to welcome Dr. Mentor Petrella, who will be speaking about neurosurgery in Albania. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to present Walter Lehmann as the neurosurgeon who started neurosurgery in my country. My father, who was teacher of literature, has explained me on this illustration of Dante's Inferno of the Limbus. On canto fourth, great grief sighs upon my heart when this I heard, because some people of much worthiness I knew who in that limbo were suspended. And as you see here with the sword is Homer. The others are Ovidius, Aristoteles, Socrates, all this universal monarchy that has been put by Dante in the hell waiting for the work to go to the paradise. Walter Lehmann came in the States with Cushing for less than a year. And he wanted to introduce in Germany in that period what he has learned with Cushing. The sucker, the pads, the muscle, the silver clips, hemostasis, and after narcosis. In a letter that he addressed to Cushing, we understand what happens in Germany on that time, that many surgeons has done neurosurgery, but he was now more neurosurgeon, that's the general surgeon, and it was better to stay and to wait what the history will tell us in the future. On this report, we understand what happened. This is the opening ceremony of King's Oak Hospital in Tehran in 1932, is the actual university hospital Mother Teresa when I work. When King's Oak has made an appeal to invite foreign doctors to came to transform the health system in the country. The US ambassador on that time, Herman Bernstein, who loved the country, he has had close contact with the king, and he forecast the Italy aggression policy toward Albania that he published in New York Times five years before the Mussolini occupation of Albania. This is the meeting that he has had with the King's Oak on the time when he has an agreement to create an enclave of Jewish in Albania in 1933. We found in different libraries the displaced German scholar by Kroskowitz about Lehman, his graduation, and it's mentioned that he has been in military hospital, in reality it was general hospital. Another book, Lion and Star by Friedman, Jonathan Friedman, who described 350 professor, among them 109 were fired, and we found the name of Lehman. A book that has been published this year, Betrayed, Displaced, and Forgotten, a part of his life has been written by Ulrike Eisenberg. I found there that he published, after his education with Kachin, The Essential of Neurosurgery in 1930, and there are 61 scientific papers and books before he was fired. In the archive states of Albanian states, I found in 20 years research, this permission that has been given by King's Oak to Walter Lehman and among him more than 12 professors from Germany and Austria. A secret intelligent report by the Italians followed all the activities of Jewish professors in Albania. In this picture you see, that has been shot in 1935, you see Walter Lehman, Schlesinger, Nobel, Kassler, Kalmar, all these doctors and professors who spent more than six years in the King's Hospital, and they proposed to the King to open the Faculty of Medicine in Tirana. His neurosurgical activity in Albania started in 1936 in Regional Hospital of Loura with head trauma, and we have all the files of his operation during three years, a special spinal echinococcus, a cerebral abscess, a meningioma, and unspecified brain tumors. He left Albania one week before Mussolini invaded the country, and this is the letter that he sent to the director that Dr. Kassler will take place of his set of craniotomy. My professor, Professor Kurti, who started to operate with Lehman set of craniotomy as the first clinic of neurosurgery in Albania. In the short history of medicine, we have some notes on his activity that are mentioned because during the communist period, it was all their activity of Jewish professor has been abnegated. On personal notes of Walter Lehman, Klaus and Hans Lehman sent a letter on 2013 that he has said that three and a half years in Albania were the most fulfilling of his life. I couldn't reach his family because, you know, during the Cold War, we couldn't communicate with the family, but the memory of Walter Lehman is engraved in the entry of our institution, and the family didn't know about this event. I found in obituary in New York Times this year that Klaus has died, but I am in contact with Hans, and we will salute Walter Lehman for his work. He died in 20th of July, 96, in Carmel, California. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much.

neurosurgery

Albania

Walter Lehmann

history

King's Oak Hospital