Anatomist Hermann Stieve used Nazi victims for his research on the menstrual cycle, but did he also fabricate facts?

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Hermann Stieve (1886-1952), director of the Berlin Anatomical Institute from 1935, benefited from the rise of execution numbers during the "Third Reich". He used organs and tissues from executed women for his histological research on the reproductive organs and investigated the influence of "nervous agitation" on the cyclical changes of endometrium and ovary. It is still controversial how he was able to acquire intimate data on the executed women and it was therefore suggested that some of his data may have been "invented".

Methods

Newly emerged dissection protocols and histological drawings from Stieve's research, together with archived court records, enable a more detailed analysis of Stieve's published data.

Results

We extracted 304 case descriptions from S

SUBMITTER: Winkelmann A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9470644 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature