August Gottlieb Richter

Richter's silhouette in the Schubert silhouette collection (1779)

Göttingen-Weende, Gottlieb-Richter-Weg

August Gottlieb Richter (born April 13, 1742 in Zörbig / Saxony , † July 23, 1812 in Göttingen ) was a versatile and important German surgeon .

biography

Richter grew up in a Protestant rectory. His mother was Christine Dorothea Richter, née Teichmann; his father, Georg Gottfried Richter, was pastor and school inspector in Zörbig, among other things. August Gottlieb began studying medicine at the University of Göttingen in 1760 . The academic teacher was his uncle Georg Gottlob Richter , who at that time held the chair of medicine there. After receiving his doctorate on September 12, 1764, he embarked on a two-year study trip that took him to important study places in medicine such as Paris , London , Oxford , Leiden , Amsterdam and Groningen . There he made the acquaintance of famous doctors such as Jean-Louis Petit (1674–1750) and Percivall Pott . After his return in 1766 Richter was offered an extraordinary professorship in Göttingen , and in 1771 he was given a full professorship for medicine. His fields of work were medical and operative surgery and, as its pioneer in Göttingen, ophthalmology .

Scudelle (bas-relief) August Gottlieb Richter at the "Red House" University of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad)

It is an enduring merit of Richter to have given the more artisanal training of surgeons a scientific basis. An important contribution to this was a large number of publications in which the seven-book "Foundations of Wundarzneykunst" (1782-1804), the two-volume "Treatise of the fractures" (1777-1779) and the "Treatise of Ausziehung of cataract " ( 1773) are of outstanding importance. For these services he was honored by the Albertus University of Königsberg: On the new building of the surgical clinic (around 1847), the so-called "Red House" (from 1883 medical university clinic), a scudelle was built by Richter and another by the surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach (1792–1847) attached. The old university building survived the war. The Scudellen most likely come from Rudolf Siemering . Richter also published one of the earliest papers , a journal for a medical specialty. The "Surgical Library", published in Göttingen and Gotha from 1771 to 1797, gave primarily German surgeons an overview of the specialist literature in their field, including foreign ones, that had been published over the course of a year. Contemporaries praised Richter's no-frills writing style, which set him apart from many of his contemporary colleagues. As an empiricist and a practitioner , he reduced the surgeon's extensive range of instruments to essential instruments, to which he also added another with the knee-shaped curved scissors.

In 1780 he opened a surgical clinic with 15 beds in Göttingen , the so-called “Freemason Hospital”, and in the same year became the personal physician of the Hanoverian king. Richter was the leading surgeon of his time , along with Professor Carl Caspar von Siebold from Würzburg . He was friends with the court dentist and Joseph Calmann Linderer, a pioneer of modern dentistry, who worked as Göttingen university dentist in 1812. Richter also dealt with dental diseases. Richter's pupils included Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland and Karl Gustav Himly . His nephew is the botanist Georg Ludwig Koeler .

Richter was a member of the Göttingen Freemason Lodge Augusta to the three flames and at times their master from the chair . He was an associate member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences since 1770 and a full member since 1776 .

Fonts

Monographs

• The beginnings of Wundarzney art. 7 volumes, Joh. Chr. Dieterich, Göttingen / Vienna 1782–1804.
• Treatise on the Fractions (1777–1779). Digitized volume 1 and volume 2
• Treatise on the cataract drawing out (1773). Digitized

Magazines

• Surgical Library (1771–1797)

literature

• Ernst Gurlt :  Richter, August Gottlieb . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, pp. 447-451.
• Georg Fischer : Surgery 100 years ago. FCW Vogel, Leipzig 1876, pp. 171-209 ( The upswing in German surgery under August Gottlieb Richter ).
• Peter Christian Proff: Life and work of the Göttingen surgeon August Gottlibe Richter (1742–1812), with special consideration of his achievements in thoracic surgery. Medical dissertation 1999.
• Gottfried Walther: The rise of German surgery to science under August Gottlieb Richter. Medical dissertation Jena 1960.
• Volker Zimmermann: Richter, August Gottlieb. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1250.

Web links

• Works by and about August Gottlieb Richter  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Georg Fischer : Surgery 100 years ago. FCW Vogel, Leipzig 1876, p. 182
2. ↑ Volker Zimmermann: Richter, August Gottlieb. 2005, p. 1250.
3. ↑ Sabine Motsch: The beginnings of ophthalmology in Göttingen with special consideration of August Gottlieb Richter (1742-1812). Medical dissertation Göttingen 1995.
4. ↑ Ullrich Rainer Otte: Jakob Calmann Linderer (1771-1840). A pioneer in scientific dentistry. Medical dissertation, Würzburg 2002, p. 27.
5. ^ Karl Franz Hoffmann: August Gottlieb Richter and the stomatology around 1800. In: Dental practice. Volume 18/19, 1967, p. 244.
6. ^ Martin Müllerott:  Koeler, Georg Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 316 f. ( Digitized version ).
7. ↑ History of the Augusta Lodge on the Three Flames
8. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 201.