Double name
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Double name

Bearing no relation to its historical description, the gate was also named after a famous pioneer of radiology, Guido Holzknecht, in 1998.

Holzknecht had studied medicine in Vienna, Strasbourg and Königsberg. At the Medical University Clinic of the General Hospital he was mainly interested in radiology – a discipline which at the time was still in its infancy.

He compiled epochal textbooks on X-ray diagnosis of breast tissue disease and gastric cancer. He carried out research and published his findings on the Röntgenlichtmeßapparat (X-ray guage) and radiation therapy. He also compiled a handbook on general and special radiography.

Holzknecht was co-founder of the Vienna X-Ray Society and founded a radiology school and trial centre in his department, which would become enduring features of the General Hospital.

The harmful effects of radiation only became apparent to pioneers of the period over time. But Guido Holzknecht saw that skin damage depended on the dose of the radiation. As a result of his discovery, he constructed a machine that could approximately control the level of radiation: the chromoradiometer.

With this simple, albeit not very reliable machine, which he presented in 1902, radiation damage in his department could be reduced by almost 90 percent. Nevertheless, in 1931 Holzknecht himself fell victim to the hazards of his profession and died of cancer as a result of radiation damage, after having undergone more than sixty mutilating operations over the previous twenty years.

Along with this gate of remembrance, a monument in Arne Karlsson Park was dedicated to him in 1932. 

Image caption: Guido Holzknecht in his X-ray laboratory in around 1916
Vienna University Archive 106.I.2136
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