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Hans Conrad Julius Reiter (26 February 1881 – 25 November 1969) was a GermanNazi physician who conducted medical experiments at theBuchenwald concentration camp.[1] He wrote a book on "racial hygiene" calledDeutsches Gold, Gesundes Leben – Frohes Schaffen.[2] In 1916, he described a disease with the symptomsurethritis,conjunctivitis andarthritis, which became known asReiter's syndrome.
Reiter was born in Reudnitz, nearLeipzig in theGerman Empire. He studied medicine at Leipzig and Breslau (nowWrocław), and received a doctorate from Tübingen on the subject oftuberculosis. After receiving his doctorate, he went on to study at the hygiene institute inBerlin, thePasteur Institute inParis andSt. Mary's Hospital in London, where he worked with SirAlmroth Wright for two years.[3] Reiter was also known for implementing strict anti-smoking laws in Nazi Germany.
DuringWorld War I, Reiter worked first as a German military physician on theWestern Front inFrance. While there, he cared for several soldiers suffering fromWeil's disease, and made his first notable discovery that one of the causative bacteria wereLeptospira icterohaemorrhagica, which had eluded culture methods and identification by other scientists ever since that disease had been recognized in 1886.[4] Later, after being transferred to theBalkans, where he served in the 1st Hungarian Army, he reported a German lieutenant with non-gonococcalurethritis,arthritis, anduveitis that developed two days after a diarrheal illness and had a protracted course with relapses over several months. The combination of two of the elements, urethritis and arthritis, had been recognized in the 16th century, and the triad had first been reported bySir Benjamin Collins Brodie, an English surgeon who lived from 1783 to 1862. Separately from Reiter, the triad was also reported in 1916 by Fiessinger and Leroy.[5] Reiter thought he saw aspirochete which he calledTreponema forans, related to but distinct fromTreponema pallidum, the causative agent ofsyphilis, and erroneously thought it was the cause, calling the diseaseSpirochaetosis Arthritica.[6][7] The error probably was influenced by his previous discovery ofLeptospira icterohaemorrhagica, and by his work onTreponema pallidum that later enabled others to develop the "Reiter Complement Fixation Test" for syphilis.[3] Nevertheless, the eponym Reiter's syndrome was used for the disease he described, and the syndrome became widely known by that name.[8][9]
After the end of World War I, Reiter became chief of the hygiene department atRostock.[3] He was a political man, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime. His career was further boosted when, in 1932, he signed an oath of allegiance toAdolf Hitler. In 1933, he was made department director of theKaiser Wilhelm Institute of Experimental Therapy. In 1936, his meteoric rise continued when he was made director of the health department of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and received an honorary professorship in Berlin. WithJohann Breger, he wrote a book on racial hygiene calledDeutsches Gold, Gesundes Leben — Frohes Schaffen ("German Gold, Healthy Life — Glad Work"). He was also a strong supporter of Hitler's anti-smoking campaign, considered medically progressive at the time. Reiter was a talented teacher who was popular with his students.
Reiter was a member of theSchutzstaffel (SS) duringWorld War II and participated in medical experiments performed by the Nazis.[1] After the Nazis were defeated, he was arrested by theRed Army inSoviet Union-occupied Germany and tried atNuremberg. During his detention, he admitted to knowledge of involuntary sterilization,euthanasia, and themurder of mental hospital patients in his function as the gatherer of statistics and acting as "quality control" officer, and to helping design and implement an explicitly criminal undertaking atBuchenwald concentration camp, in which internees were inoculated with an experimentaltyphus vaccine, resulting in over 200 deaths. He gained an early release from his internment, possibly because he assisted the Allies with his knowledge of germ warfare.[10]
After his release, Reiter went back to work in the field of medicine and research inrheumatology.[3][4] He died at age 88, in 1969, at his country estate inKassel-Wilhelmshöhe.[3]
In 1977, a group of doctors began a campaign to replace the term "Reiter's syndrome" with "reactive arthritis". In addition to Reiter'swar crimes, they pointed out that he was not the first to describe the syndrome, nor were his conclusions correct regarding its pathogenesis.[11] Reiter incorrectly concluded that the triad of conjunctivitis, urethritis, and non-gonococcal arthritis was the result of aspirochetal infection and proposed the name "Spirochaetosis arthrosis".[12] The group of doctors was joined by Dr.Ephraim Engleman, one of the authors on the first English-language journal article that used the term "Reiter's syndrome", who was still practising 65 years later and had been unaware of Reiter's Nazi connections at the time he suggested the eponym. The campaign gradually gained momentum, and the term "Reiter's syndrome" has become increasingly anachronistic and has fallen out of favor.[13][14]
