Commemorative Plaque to Stanislav Prowazek (Provázek) in Jindřichův Hradec

1965 

The Commemorative Plaque to Stanislav Prowazek (Provázek) (1875–1915) is placed on the house where he was born in Jindřichův Hradec. Prowazek was a prominent physician, zoologist, microbiologist and parasitologist, and was especially renowned for his discovery of the causative agent of epidemic typhus. He contracted the disease himself and died at a very young age.

 

 

Stanislav von Prowazek went to elementary school and to high school in Pilsen and then studied natural sciences from 1894 at the German Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague - zoology under Berthold Hatschek and botany under Richard Wettstein. The physicist Ernst Mach, the philosopher Anton Marty, the physiologist Ewald Hering and the anatomist Carl Rabl also had a considerable influence on Prowazek. In 1897 Professor Hatschek left for the University of Vienna and Stanislav Prowazek followed him and completed his doctoral studies there with a dissertation on ciliates. His first publication concerned plankton in the Vltava and Otava rivers, soon followed by many other zoological works. His work in several scientific institutions in Germany (Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main) as well as his research stays abroad in Istria, Brazil and Java were crucial for Prowazek`s subsequent professional development. In 1907 Prowazek became head of the zoological department of the Institute of Tropical Diseases in Hamburg. Between 1910 and 1911 he stayed in New Zealand, Samoa, New Guinea and Sumatra, but also visited Japan, China and India. In Java, for example, Prowazek, worked with Albert Neisser researching syphilis in anthropoid monkeys. He also conducted research with Ludwig Halberstädter on the then widespread infectious eye disease trachoma here. During his stay in the Mariana Islands and Cook Islands, which were then considered the end of the world, Prowazek reportedly operated on 400 trachoma patients. During the Balkan Wars, Prowazek went to Belgrade in 1913 and to Constantinople in 1914. Here he investigated the transmission of epidemic typhus and tried to prevent its further spread. He concluded that the carrier of the disease was the human body louse. From January 1915, researching an outbreak of typhus infection, he worked in the Russian prison camp in Chotěbuz (German: Cottbus), where he contracted the disease himself and died there on 17 February 1915. Before dying, however, he managed to describe in great detail the mechanism of transmission of epidemic typhus. Stanislav von Prowazek is buried in the family tomb in Kamenice nad Lipou.

 

The memorial plaque, designed by the academic sculptor Václav Hlavatý, was unveiled at the birthplace of Stanislav Prowazek in Jindřichův Hradec on 14 November 1965. The placement of the memorial plaque was an initiative of the Friends of Ancient Jindřichův Hradec association and the event was also supported by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

 

References

Fürbach, F.: Pamětní deska Prof. Stanislava Provázka. In: Jindřichohradecký zpravodaj, listopad 2013, s. 9.

 

Hatschek, B.: Nachruf für Stanislaus v. Prowazek. In: Verhandlungen der kaiserlich-königlichen zoologisch-botanischen Gesellschaft in Wien, sv. 65, 1915, s. 65–68.

 

Švejnoha, J.: Stanislav Prowazek (17.11.1875–17.2.1915). In: Kazuistiky v alergologii, pneumologii a ORL, 3/2011, s. 56–57. 

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