Hitler ‘used leeches’

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6

Hitler ‘used leeches’

NZPA-Reuter London Adolf Hitler used leeches to fight a buzzing in his ears, and cocaine to dispel sinus pains, according to a book published yesterday. The book, edited by a British historian David Irving, contains medical records kept by Hitler’s private physician, Dr Theodore Morell.

Mr Irving said that his book “The Medical Diaries,” was coming out three weeks early because of interest in Hitler’s purported diaries, recently discovered by the West German magazine “Stern.”

Mr Irving has joined the debate over the authenticity of the diaries, at first dismissing them as forgeries, but later changing his mind on the grounds that the handwriting fitted in with his own conclusion that Hitler had Parkinson’s disease towards the end of his life.

According to Mr Irving’s book, Dr Morell prescribed leeches to cure a buzzing in Hitler’s ears, and to clear his head.

“First I made a small prick under the ear, but the skin was like leather,” Dr Morell wrote. “I had to push very hard to draw even the tiniest drop of blood.”

Hitler’s valet described the Nazi leader sitting in front of the mirror and watching fascinated as the leeches sucked his blood, says the book. Hitler was given cocaine to dispel sinus pains. He asked his ear, nose and throat specialist, Professor Erwin Giesing, to give him regular doses as it enabled him to think more clearly. “Hitler began to look forward to Giesing’s cocaine treatment every other day,” says Mr Irving. ‘“lt’s not as though I’m ill at all,’ was how he described the effects.”

According to Dr Morell, Hitler was given many drugs including the male sex hormone testosterone, which was prescribed as a general tonic. He took 16 pills a day — close to the maximum dose — to cure “spastic constipation caused by overwork” Dr Morell

In his last years, Hitler spent only 15 minutes a day in the fresh air, passing the remaining time without natural light in bunkers, said the doctor.

The London “Daily Express” newspaper, in its review of the book, said that Dr Morell had pumped Hitler full of useless and sometimes addictive drugs mainly in an attempt to cure his chronic flatulence.

“Stern” published the first main extracts from the purported Hitler diaries yesterday which it said showed that he had approved plans by his deputy, Rudolf Hess, to fly to Britain in 1941.

The magazine quoted passages both from the diaries and a special volume relating to the Hess flight.

Hess, imprisoned as a Nazi war criminal in 1946 and now the only prisoner in West Berlin’s Spandau jail, flew to Britain in May 1941, on a mysterious and abortive mission apparently aimed at sounding out prospects for a peace deal with Winston Churchill.