Johann Lukas Schonlein

Johann Lukas Schonlein

Johann Lukas Schonlein (1793 - 1864) German professor of medicine, one of the first to teach medicine in the local language than Latin. He was among the first to use bedside teaching as a method of learning clinical medicine. Schonlein is credited with giving the present name for two diseases, tuberculosis and hemophilia. Together with his student and pediatrician, Eduard Heinrich Henoch, he was the first to describe the eponymous Henoch-Scholein purpura, the most common vasculitis in children, characterized by the triad of non-thrombopenic purpura, arthritis and abdominal pain. He also discovered the parasitic cause of favus, a ringworm-like disease mainly affecting the scalp.

Heinrich Quincke

Heinrich Quincke

Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke (1842 - 1922) German physician and surgeon, most famous for his introduction of lumbar puncture (also called Quincke's puncture) for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. He is also remembered for his study on a wide variety of diseases such as angioedema (Quincke's edema), benign/idiopathic intracranial hypertention (which he called serous meningitis), Quincke's pulse (with redness and pallor under the fingernails, one of the signs of aortic insufficiency), and Quincke's position (supine position with the head lower than the feet). Although Quincke was primarily an internist, he retained an active interest in lung surgery throughout his life. His older brother was the physicist, Georg Hermann Quincke.

Edmund Rose

Edmund Rose

Edmund Rose (1836 - 1914) German surgeon, son of the mineralogist Gustav Rose, and the grandson of the pharmacologist Valentin Rose the Younger. He is remembered for his pathological studies of cardiac tamponade, a term which he coined. He also did research on color blindness and xanthopsia, and the adverse effects of the formerly used anthelminthic Santonin.

Ambroise Pare

Ambroise Pare

Ambroise Pare (1510 - 1590) French surgeon, considered one of the fathers of surgery. He was an innovator in the field of battlefield surgery and the story of how he accidentally created what was perhaps the first clinical trial in the history of medical science is a famous example of his powers of observation and also his compassion towards his patients, for which he was well known. The oft used statement, "I treated but God healed" was first made by Pare. Pare is also known for the experiment where he discredited the then widely held superstitious belief in bezoars as an antidote for poisoning. He also contributed to the development of prosthetic substitutes, such as artificial limbs and eyes.

Friedrich Neufeld

Fred Neufeld

Friedrich Neufeld (1869 - 1945) German physician and bacteriologist, who discovered the various pneumococcal types. In 1900, Neufeld found out the bile solubility of pneumococci. Later using immunological techniques he classified the pneumococci into three types, based on the fact that the bacteria would swell in the presence of the specific anti-sera, which he called the Quellung reaction (from the German for swelling). Neufeld was also a gifted pianist, and he never married and lived with his mother throughout his life. Neufeld is supposed to have died in war torn Berlin in 1945 from Entkraftung (exhaustion).

Frederick Griffith

Fred Griffith

Frederick Griffith (1879 - 1941) British public health scientist, who in 1927 conducted the now famous experiment, which demonstrated the phenomenon of bacterial transformation, then attributed to the presence of a transforming principle, and later proved by Oswald Avery, Colin MacCleod and Maclyn Mccarty as genetic DNA. In what is now known as the Griffith experiment, Frederick Griffith demonstrated conclusively that the non-pathogenic R strain of the pneumococcus can be induced to transform into the pathogenic S strain. It was said that Griffith and his colleague-friend William Scott could do more with a kerosene tin and primus stove than most men could with a palace, because of the fact that the laboratory conditions they worked in were primitive, and yet their research was outstanding. Griffith is supposed to have died along with his friend Scott in his apartment amid an air raid during WW II's London Blitz.

Hans Christian Gram

Hans Christian Gram

Hans Christian Gram (1853 - 1958) Danish bacteriologist, who developed the Gram stain method of differential staining that has become a widely used method for classifying pathogenic bacteria. Gram was also among the first to notice that macrocytes are a characteristic feature of pernicious anemia, which was in fact the subject matter of his doctoral thesis. Gram studied botany before studying medicine and he retained a life long interest in plants. He was a very modest man and remarked on his publication of the Gram staining procedure that it was an imperfect method which he hoped would be improved upon by fellow scientists.

Auguste Ambroise Tardieu

Auguste Tardieu

Auguste Ambroise Tardieu (1818 -1879) The foremost French toxicologist and forensic medical expert of the mid-19th century. He was involved as expert evidence in some of the most notorious murder cases in the history of France. Tardieu was the first to write on child sexual abuse, which he classified as a type of physical assault. Battered child syndrome, now widely recognized, is also known as Tardieu's syndrome in his honor. Tardieu's ecchymosis, subpleural spots of ecchymosis that follow the death of a new born child by strangulation or suffocation, were first described by him in 1859. Besides being an expert in legal medicine, Tardieu also wrote about the terrible working conditions of children in mines and factories, which had a great positive impact in bring about much needed change.

Mathieu Orfila

Mathieu Orfila

Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila (1787 - 1853) Spanish born French toxicologist, regarded as the founder of forensic medicine. Orfila was one of the first to publish books on toxicology and patterns of decomposition of dead bodies. He was consulted as the foremost toxicologist for evidence in many celebrated murder cases in 19th century France. Orfila was also a physician, but his primary interest was in forensic and legal medicine. One of his most celebrated cases was the sensational Marie LaFarge case in 1840, in which he conclusively proved that arsenic was used as a poison to perpetrate the murder.

Carl von Rokitansky

Carl von Rokitansky

Baron Carl von Rokitansy (1804 - 1878) Outstanding Bohemian pathologist, one of the most important figures in establishing pathology as a branch of medical science. Rokitansy is said to have personally conducted more than 30,000 autopsies in his lifetime. A large number of medical conditions are named after him - Rokitansy-Cushing ulcer (a gastric ulcer caused by elevated intracranial pressure), von Rokitansky syndrome (Budd-Chiari syndrome, occlusion of the hepatic veins, resulting in the calssical triad of abdominal pain, ascites and hepatomegaly), Rokitansky nodule (a teratoma), Rokitansky-Aschoff sinuses (diverticula in the wall of the gall bladder, may be associated with cholecystitis) and Rokitansky's triad (pulmonary stenosis). The very rare Superior mesenteric artery syndrome, characterized by the compression of the third part of teh duodenum between the abdominal aorta and the superior mesenteric artery, was first described by Rokitansky. Rokitansky was also a philosopher (an ardent follower of Schopenhauer) and a liberal politician. The famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow is said to have referred to him as the "Linne of pathological anatomy."

Ingaz Semmelweis

Ingaz Semmelweis

Ingaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818 - 1865) Hungarian physician, described as the "savior of mothers" for his pioneering role in discovering that washing hands (with chlorinated lime) could drastically cut the incidence of puerperal or childbed fever. He is considered one of the most important people responsible for adoption of  antiseptic measures in hospitals, though his theory and suggestions were mostly discarded by contemporaries of his time. Semmelweis died in a mental asylum, probably from septicemia from the infected wounds he had when he was severely beaten up by guards of the institution. Semmelweis reflex, which is a metaphor for the almost reflex like rejection of new ideas because it is against the popularly held belief, is named after him, as he himself suffered extensive rejection and ridicule for his beliefs about puerperal fever.

William Broadbent

William Broadbent

Sir William Henry Broadbent (1835 - 1907) English physician, well known for his contributions to cardiology and neurology. He was the first to describe a form of stroke, now known as Broadbent apoplexy, which is caused by cerebral hemorrhage into the ventricular system. Broadbent law which states the occurrence of unequal distribution of paralysis in ordinary forms of hemiplegia is named after him. Broadbent sign (recession of the left 11th & 12th intercostal spaces in adherent pericardium) and Broadbent inverted sign (pulsations on the posterior lateral chest wall in synchronization with ventricular systole, in cases of gross left atrial dilation) are both named after him. Two of his sons were also eminent physicians. William Broadbent was involved in a notorious criminal case in the 1890s when he was blackmailed by the serial-killer Dr Thomas Neill Cream (also called the Lambeth poisoner) in a letter that threatened to implicate Broadbent for murders. Towards the end of his life, he was made a baronet for his services rendered to the king.

William Smellie

William SMellie

William Smellie (1697 - 1763) Scottish obstetrician, regarded as the father of British midwifery. He wrote a number of famous textbooks on obstetrics which were widely read. In many of his writings, he was helped by his friend and fellow physician-writer, the author Tobias Smollett. Smellie had a successful practice, and he designed new varieties of obstetric forceps, devised a maneuver to deliver the head first in case of breech presentation, and described in detail the mechanism of labor. Smellie was also a painter and musician, pursuits which he enjoyed in leisure after his retirement to the village of Lanark. Smellie and famous contemporary obstetrician William Hunter have recently been accused of conspiring in murdering young pregnant women to obtain bodies for further study of anatomical changes during pregnancy.

John Hughes Bennett

John Bennett

John Hughes Bennett (1812 - 1875) English physician, physiologist and pathologist. He was the first to describe leukemia (then known as leukocythemia) as a blood disorder. He was also the first to describe pulmonary aspergillosis and also to advocate the use of cod liver oil as a therapeutic agent. He was one of the foremost medical educators of his day, and is considered the father of physiological education for his efforts to bring practical experimental lessons to the medical classroom. He was also one of the first to use the microscope for teaching. He was an opponent of blood letting practices, and advocated for the admission of women to medical schools.

Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle

Friedrich Henle

Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle (1809 - 1885) German physician, pathologist and anatomist, one of the great early figures in the development of modern medical science. He was an early proponent of the germ theory of diseases and Robert Koch was one of his students. He is most famously remembered as the discoverer of the loop of Henle in the kidney. His mammoth Handbook of Systematic Anatomy is considered a classic reference text to this day. His name is associated with many anatomical structures such as the Henle's layer (outer layer of cells of root sheath of hair follicle), Henle's ampulla (ampulla of the uterine tube), crypts of Henle (microscopic pockets in the conjuctiva), Henle's spine (suprameatal spine of the mastoid), Henle's fissure (fibrous tissue between cardiac muscle fibers) and Henle's ligament (tendon of the transversus abdominis). Henle was a man of varied interests who was at home in both the sciences and the arts, and he was also an accomplished musician.

Arthur Hill Hassall

Arthur Hill Hassall

Arthur Hill Hassall (1817 - 1894) British physician, best known for his work on food adulteration and other aspects of public health and sanitation. He also studied botany, and his book on freshwater algae and microscopic observations on water bought into public prominence the need for water reform. He suffered from tuberculosis and throughout his life increasingly sought warmer climates as an aid to cure. He established the National Cottage Hospital sanatorium for treatment of consumptive diseases of the chest. Hassall's corpuscles (spherical eosinophilic bodies in the medulla of the thymus) and Hassall-Henle bodies (small excrescences in the periphery of the Descemet's membrane of the cornea) are both named after him. His work on food adulteration with the help of Thomas Wakely (founder of influential medical journal The Lancet) was instrumental in bringing about much needed reform in food safety.

Astley Paston Cooper

Sir Astley Cooper

Sir Astley Paston Cooper (1768 - 1841) English surgeon and anatomist, renowned for his contributions to anatomy and new surgical techniques and treatments. Many anatomical structures are named after him, such as the suspensory ligaments of the breast (Cooper's ligaments), superior pubic ligament (Cooper's pubic ligament), Cooper's fascia of the spermatic cord and Cooper's stripes (a fibrous structure in the ulnar ligament). Cooper was also renowned for his surgical skills and innovations. He made advances in surgery of the hernia, and of vessels, his most famous contribution being the use of ligation to treat aneurysms. Many diseases were also named after him, such as Cooper's testis (neuralgia of the testicles), Cooper's neuralgia of the breast, Cooper's retroperitoneal hernia, and Cooper's disease (benign cysts of the breast). For his removal of the infected sebaceous cyst from the head of King George IV, he was made a baronet. He had one of the most extensive surgical practices in the first half of the 19th century. His lectures were widely attended by students, and the poet John Keats was one of his students during his medical schooling.

Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer

Edawrd Sharpey-Schafer

Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer (1850 - 1935) English physiologist, who coined the term "insulin" after theorizing that diabetes mellitus was caused by the deficiency in production of a single substance by the pancreas. He also coined the term "endocrine" for substances that are directly released into the bloodstream, after having discovered adrenaline with George Oliver (English physician and famed inventor of many medical instruments, such as the hemoglobinometer and arteriometer). The Schafer method of artificial respiration (the prone-pressure method) was named after him. He added Sharpey to his name as a tribute (and also to perpetuate) to his teacher, the Scottish anatomist William Sharpey (after whom Sharpey's fibres, which join the periosteum to the bone lamellae, are named).

William Brooke O'Shaughnessy

William O'Shaughnessy

William Brooke O'Shaughnessy (1808 - 1889) Irish physician. He is most famous for his introduction of cannabis and its healing properties to western medicine. He carried out experiments on the therapeutic uses of cannabis during his tenure as physician at the East India Company in Calcutta, India. He was also an expert on telegraphy, and is considered the father of Indian telegraph as he was responsible for laying of much of India's early telegraph lines under Lord Dalhousie's administration. O'Shaughnessy was knighted by Queen Victoria for his telegraph services in India. He also devised the first intravenous fluid and electrolyte replacement therapy for cholera patients. Much of his life after 1860, when he returned to Europe on sick leave, till his death in 1889 is obscure and remains an unsolved mystery.

Archibald Edward Garrod

Archibald Garrod

Archibald Edward Garrod (1857 - 1936) English physician, son of Alfred Garrod, who pioneered the study of inborn errors of metabolism. From the study of patients with alkaptonuria, he came to the conclusion that certain mysterious diseases can be inherited through successive generation of families according to Mendelian laws. In 1908, he wrote a famous book (which he expanded in 1923), Inborn Errors of Metabolism, where he described four disorders (Garrod's tetrad) alkaptonuria, cystinuria, pentosuria, and albinism, all caused by an inherited defect in certain metabolic pathways. He also formulated the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis and described the recessive nature of most inherited enzyme defects.  His daughter, Dorothy Garrod, was a pioneering archeologist, famed for her work on the Paleolithic period.

Alfred Baring Garrod

Alfred Garrod

Alfred Baring Garrod (1819 - 1907) English physician. He was the first to discover an abnormal increase in the amount of uric acid in the blood of patients with gout. He was also the first to propose using lithium to treat gout, also recommending it to treat mood disorders hypothesizing that gout may cause mental disturbances. Garrod is credited with coining the term rheumatoid arthritis which he firmly established as a separate disorder. In his old age, he served as physician-extraordinary to Queen Victoria. Physician Archibald Edward Garrod and the vertebrate zoologist Alfred Henry Garrod were his sons.

Sir William Jenner

William Jenner

Sir William Jenner (1815 - 1898) English physician, primarily known for making the distinction between typhoid and typhus as separate diseases, which until then were considered manifestations of the same illness. He was royal physician to Queen Victoria and as a mark of her appreciation for his services in treating Prince Albert's typhoid, she made him a baronet. As a doctor at the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond street, he was much loved by the children, in spite of his deeply unprepossessing appearance. Jenner was a workaholic, and is known to have quipped "Amusements! My amusement is pathological anatomy!" when repeatedly asked about his leisurely pursuits. As a physician he had immense reputation and was widely consulted, and had amassed a large fortune by the time of his death.

Pieter Klazes Pel

Pieter Klazes Pel (1852 - 1919) Dutch physician and professor of internal medicine. He came from a generation of physiciains, both his father and grand-father had been doctors, and his sons also went on to become doctors. Pel is widely known for his description of the Pel-Ebstein fever, a cyclical fever that occurs rarely in patients suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma. He also described the Pel's crises, an ocular crises occuring in tabes dorsalis, causing intense paroxysmal neuralgic pain in the eyes and nearby ophthalmic areas. Pel also was a renowned medical teacher, who shared the opinion of his other great contemporary Sir William Osler, that medicine is best taught and learned at the bedside rather in classrooms. His lectures were well attended and enjoyed by students, one of his famous quotes being "When someone tells me that an animal on four feet is walking around in the yard next door, it could be a small tiger or elephant, but I would still think of a cat or a dog."

Gerhard Domagk

Gerhard Domagk

Gerhard Domagk (1895 - 1964) German pathologist and bacteriologist, credited with the discovery of Sulfonamidochrysoidine (a sulphonamide marketed under the brand name Prontosil), the first commercially available chemotherapeutic drug for treating infections, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939. Domagk's daughter was the first to receive the drug when he tried it out on her during a serious bout of streptococcal infection curing her of the illness and thereby establishing its potency. Domagk was forced to refuse the Nobel prize by the Nazi regime, and he was even arrested by the Gestapo for a week. Domagk also went on to discover other effective drugs against infectious agents like thiosemicarbazones & isoniazid, both effective in the treatment of tuberculosis. Domagk's final goal was to discover a chemotherapeutic agent which would effectively combat and conquer cancer, for which he devoted much of his final years of life.

Alexander Wiener

Alexander Wiener

Alexander Wiener (1907 - 1976) American physician, noted for his contributions to forensic medicine and serology. He discovered the Rh factor with Karl Landsteiner, and helped develop the exchange transfusion for treating erythroblastosis fetalis or hemolytic disease of the newborn. His work in the later area was supplemented by the independent work of Philip Levine on the same disease. Alexander Wiener also used his extensive knowledge of blood serology in forensic cases to solve disputed paternity suits. His work in this field was so impressive that he was made an honorary member of the Mystery Writers of America for his contribution to solving crimes. Alexander Wiener was a lifelong resident of the city of New York.

Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner

Karl Landsteiner (1868 - 1943) Austrian biologist and physician, noted for his development of the modern system of blood group classification, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930. Together with the American physician, Alexander Wiener,  he discovered the Rh factor in 1937. He was also the discoverer of the polio virus, along with Erwin Popper in 1909. Landsteiner's father was a famous Vienna journalist who died when he was 6, which made him form a strong association with his mother, whose death mask he kept in his room till the day he died. Landsteiner moved to the USA in 1923, accepting an invitation from Simon Flexner, as economic conditions at the turn of World War I in Austria were no longer conducive to research. Landsteiner was much devoted to his work, and he is famously said to have died holding "a pipette in his hand".

Ludwik Hirszfeld

Ludwik Herszfeld

Ludwik Herszfeld (1884 - 1954) Polish microbiologist and serologist, who along with colleague Emil von Dungern, a German internist, discovered the inheritance of ABO blood type. He was also the first to suggest the ABO naming for Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood groups, which were originally named I, II, III and IV. Herszfeld also discovered the bacillus Salmonella paratyphi C, today called Salmonella herszfeldi. As a serologist, he was also the first to forsee a serological conflict between mother and developing fetus, which was confirmed by the discovery of Rhesus factor.

Rudolf Weigl

Rudolf Weigl

Rudolf Weigl (1883 - 1957) Famous Polish biologist, who invented the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. He founded the Weigl Institue in Lviv (now in Ukraine), where he carried out most of his research. When the Nazis occupied Poland during World War II, they were impressed by his research and asked him to make typhus vaccines for them. Some of the vaccines were smuggled into concentration camps and thus helped to protect the inmates from typhus, which was a major problem during WW II. Though Weigl developed the vaccine quite early, he hesitated to use it on a wide scale because he was not a doctor of medicine, and considered that much experimental studies had to be done before introducing it on a mass scale. His typhus vaccination was first widely used in China by Belgian christian missionaries, which bought him wide fame. Weigl gave shelter and helped many underground Polish intellectuals during the Nazi occupation.

Charles Nicolle

Charles Nicolle

Charles Nicolle (1866 - 1936) French bacteriologist, famed for his research on a variety of infectious diseases, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1928 for his discovery that lice were the vector involved in the transmission of epidemic typhus. He also discovered the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, made contributions to the control of Malta fever in the form of a vaccine and also discovered the mode of transmission of tick fever. Besides being a scientist, Charles Nicolle was also a writer of fantasy stories and philosophy.

Richard Asher

Richard Asher

Richard Asher (1912 - 1969) British physician, best known for his succinct and refreshingly provoking articles on various medical subjects. He famously said that many clinical notions were accepted because they were comforting rather than because there is any evidence to support them. He described and named the Manchausen syndrome and his article on myxedematous madness bought into light the influence of the thyroid on brain function to a large number of physicians. He is also remembered for arguing that Pel-Ebstien fever is an example of a condition that exists only because it has a name. His anothologies on medical writing, particularly Talking Sense, are still described as one of the finest examples of medical writing. Asher suffered from depression in later life and reportedly died from suicide.

Jean Antoine Villemin

Jean Antoine Villemin

Jean Antoine Villemin (1827 - 1892) French physician. Born into a poor peasant family, Villemin studied medicine at the military school at Strasbourg, and after wards practiced as a doctor at military hospitals. His important contribution to medicine was the demonstration, in 1865, that tuberculosis was an infectious disease, a finding that was largely ignored at that time.

Chales-Edouard Brown-Sequard

Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard

Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard (1817 - 1894) Widely traveled physician, born in Mauritius, for whom is named Brown-Sequard syndrome, which he was the first to describe. Brown-Sequard syndrome is a loss of sensation and motor function as a result of lateral hemisection of the spinal cord, resulting in paralysis and loss of sensation to touch & vibration on the same side of the injury and loss of sensation to pain and temperature on the other side. Brown-Sequard was an important contributor to the physiology of the nervous system and he was also one of the first to work on the physiology of the spinal cord. He also postulated the existence of substances released into the bloodstream causing effects on distant organs, chemicals which are now known as hormones. He also showed that the adrenal glands were essential for life, demonstrating that their removal resulted in quick death. In his old age, he created much controversy by claiming that injection of extracts from guinea pig testicles would prolong life, which was derisively termed Brown-Sequard elixer by fellow scientists. Brown-Sequard lived in poor and desperate circumstances for most of his life, immensely dedicated to his work, as shown by an example when he swallowed the vomits of cholera patients to investigate the effects of laudanum on the disease. He was also a modest man and extremely honest, once he rejected 200 pounds taking only his ordinary fee instead, and at another time declined an offer of ten thousand pounds to treat a boy in Italy saying that he was not the qualified person to treat the case. Brown-Sequard travelled widely in his lifetime, holding faculty positions in France, America and the UK. He also founded a number of influential academic journals, was a pioneer in the treatment of epilepsy - the first to suggest the use of bromide to control the disease, and has been called the father of endocrinology and organotherapy ("The Method of Brown-Sequard").

Henri Parinaud

Henri Parinuad

Henri Parinaud (1844 - 1905) French physician, known as the father of French ophthalmology. His main field of interest was in neuro-ophthalmology. He is associated with two medical eponyms, Parinaud' syndrome (the dorsal midbrain syndrome) and Parinaud's oculoglandular syndrome (unilateral conjuctivitis & lymphadenitis with fever as a manifestation of Cat Scratch Disease). Parinaud was born in modest circumstances and had to support himself from an young age. He was a much admired doctor who worked tirelessly, and his clinic attracted students from all over the world. He was an endearing individual who never sought wealth or fame, his main hobby being music on which he also published several works.

Charles-Philippe Robin

Charles-Philippe Robin

Charles-Philippe Robin (1821 - 1885) French microscopic anatomist and biologist. From an accident in childhood, he was blind in one eye. He lived a very frugal life and remained unmarried and painstakingly devoted to his work throughout his life. He was an excellent lecturer though very peremptory in his attitude, which probably caused even his devoted students to distance themselves from him during his later years, as he remained staunchly fixed to old ideas and refused to accept the latest developments in science. He was the first to discover the disease causing fungus Candida albicans, and also recognised the role of osteoclasts in bone formation. Virchow-Robin spaces, the enlarged perivascular spaces that surround the blood vessels for a short distance as they enter the brain are named partly after him.

Paul Langerhans

Paul Langerhans

Paul Langerhans (1847 - 1888) German pathologist & biologist. Langerhans was an outstanding scholar who during his undergraduate years described the Langerhans' cells in the skin, whose function was not discovered until nearly a century later. He was also the first to describe the group of cells now known as the islets of Langerhans, though he could not identify their function correctly. His illness from tuberculosis made him retire early from his career as Professor of Pathology. He settled in the island of Madeira seeking a cure, where he developed a strong interest in the study of certain marine worms, one of which he named Virchowia after his former mentor and friend, the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. He also studied meteorology, wrote a travel book on Madeira and tried to treat patients suffering from tuberculosis in the island. He died at the age of 41 from complications of his illness.

Frederik Ruysch

A Diorama by Frederik Ruysch

Frederik Ruysch (1638 - 1731) Dutch anatomist and botanist, known for his skills in preserving dead body parts, and for his highly artistic and fantastical creations of dioramas using the preserved parts. He was also one of the first to describe the vomeronasal organ of snakes, the valves in the lymphatic system and the central artery of the eye. Ruysch's membrane, named after him, is a thin layer of capillaries behind the internal layer of the retina. Though the main goal of Ruysch's dissections was to study anatomy, he had an artistic side in him which made him create highly original and fantastical arrangements of various body parts in symbolic settings, with many moral and philosophical quotations attached to them. Peter the Great, czar of Russia, once bought an entire collection from him. His daughter, Rachel Ruysch, was a skillful and esteemed painter of flowers, who also helped her father in creating his dioramas. Ruysch devised methods of preservation of dead bodies and parts that were unparalleled, and which he guarded in secret and would not reveal till his death. His preparations, many of which were lost, make for some of the most curious and original assemblages ever put together.

William Cowper

William Cowper

William Cowper (1666 - 1709) English anatomist and surgeon, famous for the eponymous Cowper's glands, the bulbourethral glands of the male genitourinary system, which he was the first to describe. In 1698, he published The Anatomy of Humane Bodies, which was to bring him both fame and notoriety. This work is widely considered to be a plagiarised version of the Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo's work that was published a few years ago. Though it contained much original work and writing from Cowper himself, essentially much of the text and diagrams were taken directly from Bidloo's work, which Cowper (or his publishers) had purchased in bulk, when Bidloo's book did not have good sales back in his country. This incident was to lead to numerous vitriolic exchanges between both the anatomists, but even with the fact that Cowper burrowed the work and did not give any credit to Bidloo, William Cowper still stands today as one of the most original and diligent anatomists of his time.

William Cheselden

William Cheselden

William Cheselden (1688 - 1752) Famous English surgeon and anatomist, responsible for establishing surgery as a separate profession from the former barber-surgeons. He played an important role in the creation of the Company of Surgeons, which was to later become the Royal College of Surgeons of England. As an anatomist, Cheseldon wrote two highly acclaimed and popular books on human anatomy and osteology. He performed the first known surgical cure for blindness. He also created the lateral lithotomy procedure for bladder stone extraction, for which he was very famous, taking only 30-90 seconds to perform the entire removal operation. Cheselden is also credited with the first iridectomy operation, which he used to cure certain forms of blindness by creating an artificial pupil. He also described the role of saliva in digestion, and held that digestion was not a mere mechanical process of grinding, but also of chemical reactions. Cheselden attended Sir Issac Newton on his last illness and was a friend of the famous poet Alexander Pope and Sir Hans Sloane, physician and collector, whose collections were to later become the British Museum.

Robert Knox

Dr Robert Knox

Robert Knox (1791 - 1862) Scottish surgeon and anatomist, considered the greatest teacher of anatomy of his time. Knox was partially blind in one of his eyes, and his face scarred due to smallpox infection during childhood. Knox was a brilliant scholar who stood first in his class throughout his academic schooling. His lectures were very famous for their wit, excellence and flamboyance, and attracted a large number of students. In 1828, he was unwittingly involved in the infamous Burke and Hare murder scandal, and from then onwards his career went downhill and faced considerable difficulties. Though he was not found guilty, or even called to trial, the public was outraged with him, considering him to be an accomplice & deserving of equal punishment as Burke, who was publicly hanged and later dissected. Rhymes such as "Burke's the butcher, and Hare's the thief / And Knox the boy who buys the beef" were very common, and display the obloquy & acrimony against him. Knox also wrote anthropological essays, but they were highly unscientific in their claims of inferiority of African races over the white, although he derided the Europeans for the colonial imperialistic harm they caused in Africa.

Richard von Volkmann

Richard von Volkmann

Richard von Volkmann (1830 - 1889) Distinguished German surgeon and writer of poems and fairy tales. He was the son of one of the most distinguished physiologists of the time, Alfred Volkmann. Richard von Volkmann was responsible to a large degree for the introduction of Lister's aseptic surgical techniques in Germany. He was one of the most sought after surgeons of his time, consulted widely in Germany and elsewhere. Volkmann was also the first to surgically treat the carcinoma of the rectum by excision. His efforts at treating tuberculosis of bones and joints through diet, cod liver oil and iodine, heralded attempts at preventive surgery. The ischemic contracture which bears his name, Volkmann's Ischemic Contracture was first described by him in a famous paper. The contracture is a result of arterial obstruction, observed mainly in children in the forearm and hand, resulting in a claw deformity, mainly as a result of fracture at the elbow or improper application of tourniquet or plaster, causing ishcemia and necrosis of affected muscle tissue. As a doctor, he was known as someone who would go anywhere and do anything to save a patient, and was widely admired. Volkmann was also an excellent writer of poems and fairy tales, and his book Dreams by the French Fireside is considered a classic of German Literature.

Alfred Wilhelm Volkmann

Alfred Volkmann

Alfred Wilhlem Volkmann (1801 - 1877) German anatomist, physiologist and evangelical philosopher. He was among the first to demonstrate that the sympathetic nerves consist mainly of small, medullated fibers from the sympathetic and spinal ganglia. Volkmann's canals, arterial channels within the compact bone, which connect the capillaries within the Haversian canals and carry blood to the bone from the periosteum, are named after him. His son, Richard von Volkmann, was a distinguished surgeon.

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Lazzao Spallanzani

Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729 - 1799) Italian biologist of varied interests, who did important experiments in animal reproduction, human physiology, origin of life, and also other fields like volcanoes and weather and natural history. He was also a Catholic priest, and an indefatigable traveler and collector. His experiments on biogenesis, and the spontaneous origin of life paved way for Louis Pasteur's final and complete denunciation of the debate. Spallanzani was the first to carry out artificial insemination on a dog, and he proposed that for fertilization to occur, both sperm and ovum are essential. He was also the first to describe echolocation in bats, and carried out experiments on digestion, suggesting that digestion was more chemical in nature than just mechanical trituration. Louis Pasteur highly regarded the work of Spallanzani and had his portrait, along with that of Agostino Bassi, in his office. Spallanzani died of bladder cancer, and his bladder was removed by his colleagues and admirers for study after his death, and displayed at a museum in Pavia, where it remains to this day. It is one of the most famous preserved body parts in history.

Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478 - 1553) Italian physician, poet, and scholar, an example of the Renaissance man. He was one of the first to propose that epidemic diseases were caused by tiny transferable particles, spreading from one person to another by means of direct or indirect contact, though he did not believe the particles themselves were alive. The name Syphilis for the disease comes from his poem "Syphilis sive morbus gallicus (Syphilis, or the French Disease)" about a shepherd boy named Syphilis, who by angering the sun god of Haiti, bought upon himself the dreaded infection. The poem also suggested mercury and guaiaco as a cure for the illness. after his death, a marble statue on an arch was erected in his honor at his native town of Verona. Legend has it that, the stone ball that he holds in his hand, symbolizing the world, would fall on the first honorable man who walks by it. Needless to say, it has not yet fallen!

Agostino Bassi

Agostino Bassi

Agostino Bassi de Lodi (1773 - 1856) Italian entomologist, who preceded Louis Pasteur in propounding that diseases can be caused by minute living organisms. He made this assertion from his observations of the muscardine disease (mal de segno) of the silkworm, which is caused by a parasitic fungus. He was related to the famous biologist Spallanzani, and the physicist Laura Bassi, who is famous for being the first woman teacher in Europe. His discovery of the cause of muscardine disease and methods for control were responsible for rescuing the silkworm industry in Europe which was almost abandoned due to the ravages of the disease. Bassi won instant recognition and fame for this particular work. Louis Pasteur was much influenced by his work, and had his portrait hung in his office.

William Heberden

William Heberden

William Heberden (1710 -1801) Famous English physician. William Heberden was one of the most prominent and respected physicians of his day. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer, called him as "the last of our learned physicians." Along with William Cullen, he was the most admired physician of the mid-18th century. Heberden made many important contributions to medicine, particularly in the form of detailed clinical notes he kept throughout his career, which was later published as Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases in 1802. This book is considered the last of the great medical texts published in Latin. His son, William Heberden, the Younger, also a physician, translated it into English. He was the first to clearly state the distinction between chicken pox and small pox. He also provided a detailed description of angina pectoris. Heberden's nodes, bony outgrowths in the distal interphalangeal joints, a characteristic of osteoarthritis, are named after him.

Richard Morton

Richard Morton (1637 - 1698) English physician, who was the first to state that tubercles were always present in tuberculosis disease of the lungs (which was called consumption or phthisis in his time, J L Schonlein was the first to call it tuberculosis much later in1839), about which he published a landmark paper entitled Phthisiologica. He was also the first to describe the disease which is now known as anorexia nervosa, and he also gave the name chicken pox, which he believed was a milder variant of the dreaded small pox.

Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia

Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia

Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia (1510 - 1580) Italian physician and anatomist, known as the Sicilian Hippocrates. He is also considered as one of the founders of osteology and legal medicine. He was particularly close to Vesalius, and he described in detail the sutures of the skull, and also the ethmoid and sphenoid bones. The lesser wings of the sphenoid are sometimes referred to as the processes of Ingrassia. He was also one of the first to describe the stapes, which he called the stapha, after its resemblance to the stirrups used commonly in Sicily. As a physician, he is remembered as the first to make a distinction between chicken pox and scarlet fever.

Hans Conrad Julius Reiter

Hans Reiter

Hans Conrad Julius Reiter (1881 - 1969) German physician & member of the Nazis, convicted for his war crimes of conducting medical experiments on prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the first and the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. He was also a racial hygienist, about which he wrote a book, and a supporter of eugenics, and racial sterilization & extermination, in accordance with the manifesto of the Nazis. In 1916, when he was a military physician at the Western Front, he reported the triad of non-gonococcal urethritis, uveitis & arthritis, which has come to be eponymously referred to as Reiter's syndrome. In recent years, there has been an inclination to name the condition as reactive arthritis, considering the nature of Reiter's involvement in the holocaust, and also for the fact that Reiter was in no way the first to describe the condition.

Emile van Ermengem

Emile van Ermengem

Emile van Ermengem (1851 - 1922/32?) Belgian bacteriologist, who was the first to isolate Clostridium botulinum, the causative agent of botulism. van Ermengem named the bacterium, Bacillus botulinus, but the name was later changed to the present Clostridium botulinum. Emile van Ermengem was a student of Robert Koch, and later he worked at the University of Ghent, from where he was to make the discovery from a piece of ham that had caused the disease in a group of people attending a wedding party. His sons were the popular french writer Franz Hellens and the art critique Francois Maret.

Justinus Kerner

Justinus Kerner

Justinus Kerner (1786 - 1862) German physician, poet and writer of literary and medical subjects. Kerner was the first physician to provide a complete and accurate description of what has been historically known as sausage poisoning, or medically as botulism. From this, botulism is also sometimes referred to as Kerner's disease. The Kerner variety of grapes is named in his honor, since his songs and poems frequently dealt with wine & drinking. He spent most of his life in the historical town of Weinsberg, where the townspeople presented him with a house that became a major literary retreat for the writers of the time. In his old age, Kerner was increasingly blind, and at his death was buried next to his wife.

Maurice Klippel

Klippel-Feil Syndrome

Maurice Klippel (1858 - 1942) French physician, for whom two medical contions are named, namely Klippel-Feil syndrome and Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome. Kleppel-Feil syndrome is a heterogenous group of conditions, all characterized by the fusion of 2 or more of the 7 cervical vertebrae. It is caused by the failure of the segmentation of the cervical spine during fetal development. Most common signs of the disorder include a short neck, low hairline, and decreased range of cervical motion. A Sprengel's deformity (a codntion of abnormal fetal shoulder development where one scapula fails to descend and is thereby situated higher on the back than the other, an omovertebral bone also sometimes connects the affected scapula to the spine) is generally associated with this condition. Other associated anomalies are frequent - spina bifida, cleft palate, abnormalities of heart and kidney. The former English cricketer Gladstone Small suffers from this syndrome. Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome is a rare congenital anomaly where blood and lymph vessels fail to develop properly. When Klippel and Trenaunay first described the condition in 1900, they termed it Naevus Vasculoses Osteohypertrophicus. The syndrome is characterized by the presence of port-wine stains, varicose veins, hypertrophy of bone and soft tissue (leading to local gigantism or shrinking) & and improperly developed lymph tissues.

Schaffhause Trio

Wepfer, Peyer and Brunner were referred to as the Schaffhause trio since they lived, worked and made contributions together in the field of anatomy, pathology, and medicine at the town of Schaffhause in Switzerland.


Johan Jakob Wepfer (1620 -1695) Swiss physician, pathologist and pharmacologist, chiefly remembered for his work on the vascular anatomy of the brain, and his study of cerebrovascular disease. He was the first to hypothesize that the effects of stroke are caused by bleeding or blockage of arteries in the brain. He wrote a classic treatise on stroke, Historicae apoplecticolrum. Wepfer also made important contributions in the field of toxicology, and suggested that mercury, arsenic and antimony, which were widely used in medicine during his time, were harmful to the body than curative.

Peyer's Patches

Johan Conrad Payer (1653 - 1712) Swiss anatomist and physician, who first described the eponymous Peyer's patches, aggregations of lymphoid tissue in the ileum of the small intestine. Peyer's patches are supposed to be responsible for immune surveillance and antigen presentation & sensitization. Though important in immunity, hypertrophy of Peyer's patches has been implicated in idiopathic intussusception and a heightened susceptibility to prion diseases. Salmonella infection also targets these lymphoid nodules in the small intestine. Peyer also wrote an important work on veterinary medicine.

Joseph Conrad Brunner (1653 - 1727) Swiss anatomist, and son in law of Wepfer. He is remembered for the tubuloalveolar glands in the submucosa of the duodenum that are named after him. Two disorders are associated with these Brunner's glands, hyperplasia and adenoma.