METHUSELAH ARCHIVE PRACTITIONERS / PAUL NIEHANS
Portrait photograph of Paul Niehans, a man in a dark suit, circa 1959.
PUBLIC DOMAIN source

Paul Niehans

individual · Clarens, Switzerland
lived:1882–1971
active:1931–1971
type:individual
role:promoter
location:Clarens, Switzerland
eventual status:publicly_disconfirmed
FINANCIAL CONFLICTS
Niehans owned and operated Clinique La Prairie, designed the cellular-therapy protocol he sold there, and was the sole physician administering it for the duration of his career. He published no controlled trial of his own work. The clinic charged at the top of the European medical market and was the primary income source for the family. The 1955 Pontifical Academy of Sciences appointment was prominently used in the clinic's marketing without independent clinical validation of the protocol. Developer, vendor, and credentialing roles were concentrated in a single individual, with no contemporaneous independent validation.
INTERVENTIONS PROMOTED
NOTABLE PATIENTS
EXTERNAL REFERENCES
NOTES

Paul Niehans (1882-1971) was a Swiss surgeon, born in Bern into an established Bernese medical family. He trained in Bern and Zurich and entered private surgical practice in the early 1920s. In 1931, called to an emergency case in which a thyroid operation had inadvertently removed parathyroid tissue, he injected the patient with macerated parathyroid material from a freshly killed calf and reported recovery. He opened Clinique La Prairie at Clarens, on Lac Léman, the same year, and began offering “cellular therapy” to private clients. His international profile dates from his treatment of Pope Pius XII during the pope’s grave illness in 1954 at the Vatican. Pius XII appointed him to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1955. Niehans practiced at Clarens until his death in September 1971. He published no peer-reviewed efficacy trial of his protocol during his career. His 1960 English book Introduction to Cellular Therapy (Pageant Books, New York) is the principal first-person account of his clinical practice and theoretical framework.