[Ernst Vaubel M. D. German pioneer in the field of arthroscopy 1902-1989].

In Germany of the pre-war period Ernest Vaubel at Wiesbaden was the most eminent arthroscopist. He collaborated with the manufacturer Georg Wolf at Berlin and developed his own arthroscope, a jacobaeus-type thoracolaparoscope with a 45 degrees -optic and an in- and outflow connecting piece. The optic was definitely longer than the trocard and the electric bulb at the tip was in danger during manipulation in a narrow joint. Vaubel did a rather small series of arthroscopies from 1936 to 1939 at the University hospitals of Leipzig and Frankfurt, using local anaesthesia and air medium. 1938 he held a paper at the International Congress of Rheumatologists at Bath. In the same year he published a monograph titled "Die Arthroskopie", the first book of world literature on this issue. 1939 he left the Frankfurt university hospital and went in his own private practice. 1941-1944 he did military service as medical officer of the air force. After war he had not more facilities to practice arthroscopy. His ideas and his instrument were revived in the german speaking countries in the late fifties by the sports surgeons Gottwald Heiss at Stuttgart and Reinhold Suckert at Linz.