DOCTOR DONATES GERMAN WWII SURGICAL KIT
(Click on image to enlarge)

Dr. Robert O. Thiele of Hilton Head, S.C. has donated a German World War II era field surgical kit with four trays to the National Museum of Health and Medicine. The artifact will be added to the museum's more than 12,000 historical medical objects.

Thiele, now 77, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1944 after graduation from Franklin K. Lane High School in New York.

He acquired the portable combat surgical kit as a Christmas present from Professor Eduard Heidman of the American University of Berlin on Dec. 24, 1946, after attending 48 hours of biology classes at the university.

In 1948, after serving 4 years, 8 months as a radio operator, he was discharged as a staff sergeant at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey.

He received a bachelor's degree in 1954 from Long Island University in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y. and received his doctor of osteopathy degree in 1958 from Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery. He interned in 1958 at Selby General Hospital in Marietta, Ohio.

Thiele started a solo family medicine practice in the small town of Byesville, Ohio on July 20, 1959, and after 36 years he sold his practice to a Zanesville, Ohio hospital medical group and retired to South Carolina. He has been married for almost 55 years to his wife, an ex-Berliner. The historical collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine documents changes in medical technology since the early 17th century and includes objects ranging in size from a suture needle to a two-ton MRI magnet, such as X-ray equipment, microscopes, surgical instruments, numismatics, and anatomical models. The collection is made available for the education of medical professionals, Department of Defense personnel, historians, and the public through exhibits in the museum, loans to other institutions, and individualized study.