Life changing events, if they occur at all, often are difficult to pinpoint. Not so with Dr. Werner Forssmann. The arc of his life swerved abruptly on that day in 1929, when he stuck a catheter into a handy arm vein and eased the instrument forward until its tip entered his heart. He knew he faced possible physical harm as he manipulated the catheter inward, but he discounted that, as he did other possible fallout from his probe. He had told his chief of surgery what he intended to do, and the older man had ordered him not to do it.

News of his amazing accomplishment whizzed through the little hospital even before Forssmann finished developing his x-ray films. Within the hour he was summoned to his superior’s office. The chief exploded as expected. Forssmann apologized. Things gradually cooled down. Then Forssmann showed the impressive x-ray films documenting the catheter’s location in his heart. That did the trick. The chief beamed.

“Forssmann,” he gushed, “you’ve made a great discovery, and I must congratulate you. You must publish an account of your work immediately.” He went on to say that his small hospital was not the place to continue this momentous work, that Forssmann needed better facilities to carry on his daring research. He promised to find an appropriate appointment for him, and he did, a coveted position at Berlin’s Charité Hospital, the Mecca of German surgery at the time.

With his future appearing bright, Forssmann arrived in Berlin enthusiastically, but also wary. He had heard ominous accounts of the chief of surgery, one Dr. Sauerbruch. Members of the department greeted him with disdain. One of Sauerbruch’s lieutenants taunted him. “So you’re the gentleman from the provinces who’s going to teach us all about science, are you? Well, we’ll see about that. First we’ve got to whip you into shape.”

Had that been the worst of it, Forssmann likely would have remained on course. But a more turbulent storm was gathering, this sparked by the article he had written describing his experiment on himself. When published in a major journal, that article threw a glaring spotlight on him.

He became hot news. The popular press was agog. Clusters of reporters sought interviews and wrote glowing stories about his amazing achievement. One newspaper even offered Forssmann one thousand marks for permission to publish photos of his x-rays.  He refused.

Such popularity brought consequences. He was summoned to Sauerbruch’s office. “This is an absolute disgrace,” the chief bellowed, pointing to an envelope on his desk. An eminent German surgeon had written an angry letter, claiming Forssmann had plagiarized his work and accusing him of failing to acknowledge the surgeon’s earlier work (the man apparently had done something similar on patients but had never properly published a report).

The supposed plagiarism was not the only irritant under the chief’s skin. After spouting about the surgeon’s letter, the chief fumed about the hullabaloo in the press, denouncing Forssmann’s popularity in one sentence and pouting in the next that nowhere had the young man given credit to Charité Hospital, not in his scientific article, or in stories in the press.

“But I did this work at Eberswald,” Forssmann protested. He added that he intended to continue his work and hoped to qualify for a lectureship.

Sauerbruch bristled. “You might lecture in a circus about your little tricks, but never in a respectable German university, he retorted. “Get out! Leave my department immediately.”

Suddenly jobless, Forssmann suffered another broadside attack, this from the medical community. Many doctors were alarmed by his self-catheterization, and they didn’t hesitate to vent their views, their comments often heated and personal.  And they moralized. “One doesn’t do that.” and “A good physician wouldn’t ask that of his patients.”

Despite his troubles, Forssmann did manage to land a number of short-term positions where he was able to continue his experiments, performing more catheterizations of his own heart, and even injecting radio-opaque dye to reveal the outline of his right heart cavities and pulmonary arteries, another major advance.

His work mattered little at the time, and the drumbeat of criticism continued, preventing him from finding a stable position, wearing him down. Believing he was losing the fight, he gradually shifted his focus from the heart to urology. When WWII erupted, he served as a surgeon in the German army. After the war he started a medical practice as a urologist and general physician along with his wife, also a doctor. The pair settled down in West Central Germany, built a profitable practice, raised a family, and eased into what Werner Forssmann likely considered pleasant obscurity.

But elsewhere doctors were actively threading catheters into more and more human hearts. We’ll come to that next time.