Walter Bruetsch

(Nov. 25, 1896-Jan. 31, 1977). Born and educated in Heidelberg, Germany, Bruetsch became a scholar of Latin and Greek, but the outbreak of  World War I interrupted his education. During the Battle of the Somme (1916), he suffered a paralyzing spinal wound and, after capture by the French, came under the care of noted French-Polish neurologist Joseph Babinski, best known for his discoveries about spinal injuries. He began premedical studies in Davos, Switzerland, after the war and received an M.D. degree at Freiburg, Germany, in 1922.

During the war, researchers discovered that concurrent infection with malaria could cure syphilis of the brain, then the most common cause of severe mental deterioration and disorders. Bruetsch, who immigrated to Indianapolis in 1924, inaugurated this method of treatment at Central State Hospital the next year. His major contribution was demonstrating that malarial fever did not destroy the organism causing syphilis, as commonly believed, but rather that malaria triggered production of a type of white blood cell that then consumed both pathogens.

During his some 30 years of service as a research pathologist at the hospital, Bruetsch won international recognition for his studies of neurosyphilis and was appointed a consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service.

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