Carl Friedrich Canstatt

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Carl Friedrich Canstatt (born July 11, 1807 in Regensburg , † March 10, 1850 in Erlangen ) was a German physician, general practitioner , medical officer and internist .

Life

Carl Friedrich Canstatt was born in Regensburg in 1807. He came from a traditional Jewish dynasty of doctors. An extroverted, dominant father and a deeply religious, depression-prone mother shaped his childhood. His extraordinary musicality became apparent early on. This was recognized and promoted in the form of strictly monitored cello lessons. Great diligence and the constant endeavor to meet his father's expectations soon made him an excellent cellist. Signs of tuberculosis already appeared in childhood . Regardless of this, the ambitious father - a practicing doctor himself - demanded top performance from him in school and university education as well as in music and ignored his unstable state of health. Despite the fact that the young Canstatt had the talent and skills for a career as an artist, after a long conflict of conscience he finally decided against a musical career. Instead, he took the path of medical training prescribed by his father and, after graduating from high school in 1823, began studying medicine in Vienna at the (today's) Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich .

During the five-year study period in Vienna, Canstatt developed self-confidence and his own profile through the distance to home and the separation from home. At first, however, he devoted himself to medicine without much enthusiasm. It was only through the ophthalmologist Friedrich Jäger von Jaxtthal that his interest in the chosen career awoke , which was intensified after moving from Vienna to the University of Würzburg , where he enrolled in 1828: at the Würzburg Clinic he met his professor and later mentor Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793–1864), the founder of the natural history school in medicine. Thanks to his musicality, Canstatt quickly established social relationships in Würzburg, from which his later marriage to Laura Diruf emerged . Canstatt received his doctorate in 1829 and completed a two-year internship in Heidelberg . As a result of a busy and exhausting time at the clinic of the surgeon Franz von Chelius, there were renewed signs of dormant tuberculosis, which he ignored. After passing his state examination in 1831, he worked for a short time in his father's practice in Regensburg. In 1832 he left for Paris - initially out of musical interest - and temporarily put medicine aside. He came into contact with the Parisian music scene and got to know personalities such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Frédéric Chopin , Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini . But the outbreak of cholera in March 1832 ended this brief digression and led him back - and this time for good - back to medicine: he became a cholera doctor.

He researched the Paris cholera epidemic and headed a cholera hospital in Hoelarts near Brussels in 1823/33. In 1833 he received his doctorate again in Leuven and then practiced in Brussels until 1837. In 1838 he moved to Ansbach , where he worked as an official and court doctor. In 1843 he became a full professor for internal medicine in Erlangen, where he died after suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis for a long time.

Works

Canstatt's most important contribution in terms of medical history was probably the establishment and publication of a medical yearbook in 1841 (annual report on the progress of Gesammte Medicin in all countries), which was continued by Rudolf Virchow after his death.

Other important works include a.

  • Cholera in Paris (1832)
  • About the diseases of the Choreida (1837)
  • The Diseases of Old Age and Their Cure (1839), the first coherent description of this subject
  • Manual of the Medical Clinic (1841) with concrete guidelines, techniques and therapies for medical practice
  • The special pathology and therapy, etc. (1841–42) -
  • Clinical Reviews and Treatises (1848)

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Friedrich Canstatt  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Leitschuh: The matriculations of the upper classes of the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , 4 vols., Munich 1970-1976 .; Vol. 3, p. 260.
  2. ^ Axel W. Bauer : Canstatt, Carl Friedrich. 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. 229 f.
personal data
SURNAME Canstatt, Carl Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1850
Place of death gain