>> Biography Eugen Rehfisch
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At every meeting of the FORUM URODYNAMICUM two Eugen Rehfisch Awards are presented for outstanding scientific contributions; one for basic research and one for applied clinical research. The prizes of 3000 Euro each are sponsored by Pfizer GmbH.

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Eugen Rehfisch's scientific role in urodynamics
B. Schönberger, Berlin †

The information on dr. Eugen Rehfisch's personal data is very sketchy. It was not possible to check his year of birth, probably 1862. His publications document his pro-fessional career and scientific interest. The 1895 volume of the Deutsche Mediz-inische Wochenschrift published a paper from his hand: "Ueber acute Spermatocysti-tis" ("On acute spermatocystitis") from the Poliklinik of private lecturer dr. Leopold Casper. One year later the same journal published his "Neuere Untersuchungen über die Physiologie der Samenblasen" ("New investigations on the physiology of the seminal vesicles"), prepared at the 1st Anatomical Institute in Berlin. Evidence is available also for his work, together with Leopold Casper (1859-1959), on further de-velopment of the cystoscope for ureteral catheterisation.

His investigations with relevance for our field "Ueber den Mechanismus des Harn-blasenverschlusses und der Harnentleerung" ("On the closure mechanism of the uri-nary bladder and the urinary voiding") were performed in the Physiological Institute of the Berlin University, assisted by private lecturer dr. René du Bois Reymond. The institute was chaired by prof. dr. J. Munk. The results were published on 40 pages in the 1897 volume of Virchow's Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie. His main objective was to assess which sphincter was essential for the maintenance of continence. This was tested this by experiments on dogs. He also wanted to inves-tigate the initiation of the micturition and the reason for the decrease of detrusor pressure already before the end of the micturition. This problem was studied in vivo in human. He designed the experimental system that is reproduced in several papers on the history of urodynamics (fig. 1). A lukewarm boric acid solution was instilled into the bladder with a catheter. A three-way stopcock enabled the measurement of the intravesical pressure by a Gad sphygmomanometer. A funnel under the urethal outlet directed the urine into an air displacement urinary flow meter. This allowed the recording of the intravesical pressure before and during voiding. Rehfisch was inter-ested only in the pressure changes at the start of the voiding and in the intravesical pressure decrease towards the end of the voiding. The maximal flow rate and the flow curve were irrelevant to him. These investigations led him to the paradigm that the micturition was initiated and sustained by active primary relaxation of the sphinc-ter (O. Schwarz, 1926).

His second important publication dealt with the innervation of the bladder (Virchow's Archiv, 1900). To this end he performed stimulation experiments on the n. hypogas-tricus and n. erigens in 45 male dogs between 1897 and 1899 and recorded the reac-tions of the detrusor and the sphincter. He concluded that M. von Zeissl's theory (1896) that both the n. pelvicus (= n. erigens) and the n. hypogastricus should have both activating and inhibiting fibers must be declined.

Despite the fact that his theories were abandoned later on, his experimental and clinical studies were of the utmost importance for the next generation and were rec-ognised extensively in the "Handbuch für Urologie" ("Handbook for urology") by O. Schwarz (1926).

No motivation was found for the fact that Eugen Rehfisch moved into cardiology in later years. Indications are available that document presentations at the Society for Internal Medicine in Berlin and between 1904 and 1918 several comprehensive pa-pers were published in the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift. These papers were prepared with a similar scrutiny as the urodynamic papers. The themes were endocarditis, electrocardiography, and cardiac functional investigations. Although Eugen Rehfisch quitted urology untimely, urodynamics inherited a milestone on the way to modern urological functional diagnosis with his modern experimental design (fig. 1). This fact prompted the Forum Urodynamicum to use the name its innovation award after Eugen Rehfisch.