[Albert Müller-Deham--an unjustly forgotten Austrian pioneer in geriatrics]

Albert Mueller-Deham played a role of great importance in the history of American and general geriatrics. He was born in 1881 in Vienna where he studied medicine. After graduation he was an intern, and later assistant professor at the First University Department of Medicine in Vienna. Among his teachers were such famous names as von Nothnagel, von Noorden und Wenckebach. In 1925 he was appointed chief of the medical department in the large, renowned "Versorgungsheim Lainz" in Vienna and became director of the geriatric research unit established by his initiative. With many scientific papers and his most important work, the textbook on geriatrics "Internal Medicine in Old Age" (in three languages) he became one of the pioneers of modern geriatrics. His main interest laid in the importance of the pathology of old age and its connection with clinical diseases. In 1938 he emigrated to the United States for politico-racial reasons and worked as attending physician at the Goldwater Memorial Hospital in New York. There he had the chance to continue his scientific work and pass on his vast experience to colleagues and students until his retirement from clinical practice in 1951. His new interests were philosophy and art, resulting in a book entitled "Human Relations and Power". Mueller-Deham died at the age of 90 in Santa Barbara, California. Albert Mueller-Deham deserves an important place in the history of medicine for recognizing, as one of the first in Austria, the characteristic features of diseases in old age as opposed to younger age groups. His clinical observations in the light of subsequent post-mortem analyses laid the foundation of modern geriatric medicine.