Lehrbuch der Stimm- und Sprachheilkunde

Who Was Standing at the Cradle of Phoniatrics? To Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Name of Our Medical Specialty

“…Another of Mackenzie's phoniatros letters from May 31, 1887, is part of a private German collection and not accessible to the public [11] . It is therefore not clear whether the letter reported by Luchsinger and Arnold [5][6][7] is identical with one of those of which the dates are known.…”

“…Ever since, H. Gutzmann has been unanimously considered as the founder and even as the father of phoniatrics [19,20] . There is no evidence that these authors knew and took over Mackenzie's proposal despite the statement made by Luchsinger and Arnold [5][6][7] that a new name, phoniatrics, was given to Gutzmann's specialty after Mackenzie listed phoniatros as his letterhead, and despite Böhme's [8] claim that Seeman and Stern took over this term. On the contrary, both Seeman and Stern indirectly or explicitly declared their individual or common authentic authorship and never mentioned Mackenzie as their inspiration.…”

“…Even the most meticulous chroniclers did not consider Mackenzie's initiative at all or mentioned it only after Luchsinger and Arnold [5][6][7] and Böhme [8] had published their treatises [12][13][14][15] . The long gap between the original phoniatros letterhead and the recognition of Mackenzie's merit as late as the second half of the 20th century thus remains unexplained and the information link is still missing.…”

“…and Arnold [5][6][7] and Böhme [8] relate in their treatises. This historic letterhead and Mackenzie's signature from June 28, 1886 may be reproduced here with the kind permission of the Wellcome Library, London.…”

“…3 ) introduced a new voice and speech specialty into the medical schools. In his lifetime, Gutzmann referred to this specialty as medical 'voice and speech pathology' (Sprachheilkunde) and called himself and his assistants voice and speech physicians (Stimm-und Sprachärzte) [5][6][7][16][17][18][19][20] .…”