Issels opened his Ringberg Clinic in Bavaria in 1951. Issels did not advocate a panacea-like new therapy, but rather prescribed various neglected, forgotten, or non-mainstream treatments, such as the Coley Vaccine pioneered by William Coley, hyperthermia, where Manfred von Ardenne researched its effectiveness in cancer. However, he did not dispute the importance of conventional cancer therapies like surgery and chemotherapy, and did in fact use them when treating his patients. Issels believed that cancer was caused by the weakening of the human immune system and hence had to be cured by strengthening it again. Captured by the Red Army, Issels spent several years in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps until his release at the end of 1945. His petition was granted, but he was immediately drafted and sent to the Eastern Front as a Wehrmacht combat medic. Later, during the Second World War, Issels reportedly petitioned to resign his membership in the Nazi Party when he was ordered to stop treating Jewish patients. According to an obituary in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Issels made a name for himself as a young physician several years later by successfully operating in makeshift conditions on an ill passenger aboard a German steamer. Born in Mönchengladbach in 1907, Issels received his medical degree in 1932 from the University of Würzburg.
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