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.