Friedrich Prinzing

PRINZING, Friedrich (born 1859), the founder of medical statistics in Germany, who enjoys world renown. He studied in Tübingen and Munich; he received his doctoral degree for his prize-winning work 'The Tasks of Nutrition of the Human Body in Febrile States'. From 1885, his practical medical career began in the city of Ulm on the Danube. He quickly developed an interest in medical-statistical problems, demography, the statistics of the national economy, and the literary presentation of the results of his research. By the end of the 1890s, Prinzing had already become a prominent contributor to journals, collections, and yearbooks in Germany in the fields of medical, demographic, moral, and sanitary statistics. He was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute (1905) and a member of the State Sanitary Council (1923). Throughout this time, he also maintained his primary work as a practical physician in the city of Ulm. In 1906, he published a major fundamental work summarizing more than 20 years of research, 'Handbuch der medizinischen Statistik' (Handbook of Medical Statistics), in which he constructed his system of this branch of knowledge and filled it with rich content of world material.

This work made Prinzing's name famous everywhere and was studied with particular care in Russia, where sanitary statistics were simultaneously being built independently. Among his other works of major importance are: 'Die zukünftigen Aufgaben der Gesundheitsstatistik' (Sozialhyg. Abh., 1920, no. 1); 'Die Methoden der medizinischen Statistik' (Hndb. d. biol. Arbeitsmethoden, edited by E. Abderhalden, sect. 5, part 2, Berlin-Vienna, 1924); 'Die statistischen Grundlagen der sozialen Hygiene' (Hndb. d. soz. Hygiene, edited by A. Gottstein, A. Schlossmann, and L. Teleky, vol. I, B., 1925).

In 1931, Prinzing republished the 'Handbuch der medizinischen Statistik', significantly supplementing and expanding it, including with Russian material (former Moscow Governorate, Belorussia). He participated in Russian scientific journals with articles on the influence of occupation on the morbidity and mortality of workers, on occupational mortality in England (Gigiena truda, 1924), and on dust diseases (Profilakticheskaya meditsina, 1926). For the Russian translation of the book on 'Methods of Medical Statistics' (edited by P. I. Kurkin and P. A. Kuvshinnikov), he contributed a special essay, 'Medical Statistics in Connection with Social Hygiene' (Moscow, 1926).