The director of the children’s clinics in Krefeld (Städische Kinderkliniken Krefeld), Professor Dr. Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann, published an article in the journal “Medizinsche Welt” (“Medical World”), reporting that doctors and midwifes had seen an increasing number of limb malformations in newborns. Wiedemann believed that a “toxic factor” was behind those malformations, “but we don’t know which one.”
Sources: Chronology provided by Beate Kirk, in: Der Conterganfall: eine unvermeidbare Arzneimittelkatastrophe? Dissertation. Greifswald 1998.