[Priority conflict concerning the discovery of lumbar anesthesia between August Bier and August Hildebrandt]

The history of anaesthesiology like that of other medical branches has not been free of quarrels concerning priority. International disputes between the surgeon August Bier from Kiel and his former colleague August Hildebrandt concerning the question of who was the actual inventor of spinal anesthesia have almost fallen into oblivion. While Hildebrandt and numerous other colleagues frequently stated that the New York neurologist James Leonhardt Corning was the inventor of spinal anesthesia, Bier insisted on having described and developed this method first and without any knowledge of Corning's experiments. Corning's use of the term "spinal anesthesia" in his publications probably caused the error that he was the first to describe and apply this new widespread technique. Only recently, American scientists emphasized the fact that this is not true. There will, unfortunately, not be an answer to the Question why Hildebrandt started this quarrel about priority. His reason might have been hurt feelings as he had not been mentioned as co-author in Bier's epoch-making survey.