Norbert Ortner
Norbert Ortner was an Austrian internist, whose name is associated with two cardiovascular syndromes.
Ortner was born in Linz, and was a pupil and successor of Edmund von Neusser at the Rudolfstiftung Hospital in Vienna. He later became a professor at the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna.
In 1916 he assisted in embalming the body of Kaiser Franz Joseph I. A description of the procedure appears in the medical record, and is one of the exhibits of the Vienna Pathological-Anatomical Museum. It states:
The entry is signed by Alexander Kolisko, the pathologist and court doctor, by Joseph Ritter von Kerzl, the Kaiser's personal physician, and by Ortner, as the director of the Second Medical University Clinic at the hospital in Vienna.
In 1916 Ortner was elevated to the Austrian aristocracy with the title "von Rodenstätt", and was officially known as Norbert Ortner von Rodenstätt, but lost the right to that title when the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was abolished in 1919.
Ortner syndrome I, first described by Ortner in 1897, is a left-sided vocal cord paralysis caused by compression of the laryngeal nerve due to cardiovascular changes.
The Ortner syndrome II is more commonly known as abdominal angina.
Ortner died in Salzburg, March 1, 1935, and is buried at Friedhof Rodaun, in Vienna.
