Józef Dietl (24 January 1804 in Podbuże near Sambor – 18 January 1878 in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

) was an Austro-

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

physician born to an

Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ** Austria-Hungary ** Austria ...

father and

mother. He studied medicine in

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

and

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. He was a pioneer in balneology, and a professor of

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...

, elected as its rector in 1861. Dietl described the

kidney In humans, the kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped blood-filtering organ (anatomy), organs that are a multilobar, multipapillary form of mammalian kidneys, usually without signs of external lobulation. They are located on the left and rig ...

ailment known as "Dietl's crisis" as well as its treatment. He is renowned worldwide for being a "reformer of medicine" since he demonstrated through experiments that

bloodletting Bloodletting (or blood-letting) was the deliberate withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease. Bloodletting, whether by a physician or by leeches, was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and othe ...

was useless if not dangerous. His experiments were based on the use of a

control group In the design of experiments, hypotheses are applied to experimental units in a treatment group. In comparative experiments, members of a control group receive a standard treatment, a placebo, or no treatment at all. There may be more than one tr ...

, a procedure still used today in the so-called "clinical trials" foundation of

evidence-based medicine Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available exte ...

.Sven Ove Hansson, Why and for what are clinical trials the gold standard?, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health
/ref> From 1866 to 1874, Dietl was the mayor of Kraków.

References

* 1804 births 1878 deaths People from Lviv Oblast People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Members of the Austrian House of Deputies (1861–1867) Mayors of Kraków 19th-century Polish physicians University of Lviv alumni University of Vienna alumni Academic staff of Jagiellonian University Rectors of the Jagiellonian University Burials at Rakowicki Cemetery Physicians from the Austrian Empire Physicians from Austria-Hungary {{poland-med-bio-stub