Josef Albert Amann

Josef Albert Amann was the son of Joseph Amann, the first gynaecologist to give lectures on gynaecology as a separate discipline at the University of Munich. Josef Albert Amann spent his study years under the anatomist Karl Wilhelm von Chuffer (1829-1902), the pathologist Otto Ballinger (1843-1909), and Franz von Winkle (1837-1911), gynaecologist and obstetrician, in his native city. In 1889 his approbation took him to Berlin, where he worked, among others, with Carl Ruge (1846-1926) on microscopy and on his return worked for six years as an assistant at the Münchener Universitäts-Frauenklinik. He was habilitated in 1892, and in 1898 he was appointed to succeed his father as leader of the II gynaecological department at the General Hospital (Allgemeines Krankenhaus).

Amann received the title of extraordinary professor in 1905, and the next year, in 1906, he became a budgeted extraordinary of gynaecology and obstetrics. Although working under difficult external conditions, Amann contributed to the brilliance of German operative gynaecology of his time. He was the superior master who introduced a number of new ideas and procedures, among them his original abdominal seem, the transperitoneal method of extirpation of carcinoma of the uterus, his suggestion for limiting the risk of infections, of surgery of the uterus, his making of an artificial vagina from the ampulla recti.

His favourite field was the anatomy and histology of female genitalia. I 1897 he published the first textbook of microscipical gynaecological diagnostics (in Wiesbaden), and in 1905 published the first extensive investigation of the clinical and pathological anatomy of the secondary carcinoma of uterus. He took a particular interest in the bordering areas of internal medicine and surgery and was one of the first to include urology in the speciality of gynaecology.

• Über die Neubildungen der Cervicalportion des Uterus.
  Habilitation paper, Munich 1892.
• Kurzgefasstes Lehrbuch der mikroskopisch-gynäkologischen Diagnostik.
  Wiesbaden, 1897. 16 + 172 pages.