[Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and the "wound shock"].

Abstract

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in 1889 in Vienna. As a scholar in Cambdrige University, his philosophical achievements are still major regarding the foundations of mathematics and language. In 1939, he took a job as a porter at London Guys' Hospital then under the Blitz. Wittgenstein met Drs. Grant and Reeve who worked in a dedicated "traumatic shock" under the auspices of the Medical Research Council unit, a unit which then moved to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle; Wittgenstein followed them as a technician and improved the preparation of fine pieces of histology fixed by paraffin. He also invented a new device to record pulse pressure and paradoxical pulse search in laboratory rats. At the end of the war, he returned to Cambridge until 1949 and died in 1951.