Paul Langerhans (medic, 1847)

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Paul Langerhans (1878)

Paul Langerhans (born July 25, 1847 in Berlin , † July 20, 1888 in Funchal , Madeira ) was a German pathologist . The islets of Langerhans in the pancreas and the Langerhans cells in the skin are named after him.

Life

Langerhans came from a well-known family of scientists. His father Paul Langerhans senior was a politically active doctor. Paul Langerhans was a cousin of the mayor of Köpenick, Georg Langerhans , who became famous after his arrest by the so-called Captain von Köpenick . Paul Langerhans' younger brothers also became physicians. His younger half-brother Robert Langerhans was the godchild of Rudolf Virchow , as whose assistant he also worked, and later became a pathology professor himself. His grandfather was Friedrich Wilhelm Langerhans , Berlin's first city planning officer.

After attending the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin, he enrolled in medicine at the University of Jena in 1865 . During this time Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gegenbaur had a strong influence. In 1866 he moved to Berlin and worked in the pathological institute of Virchow's family friend. With Virchow and Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben he received his doctorate in 1869 "On the finer structure of the pancreas". He discovered island-like "cell clusters" located in the pancreas , which the French histopathologist Édouard Laguesse (1861-1927) named after him in 1893 Ilôts de Langerhans (" Langerhans islands "). As early as 1867, while still a student, he had discovered the Langerhans cells , a form of dendrites , later named after him, using a technique of gold chloride staining by Julius Cohnheim . However, he wrongly assumed that this epidermal form of leukocyte was a nerve cell in the skin.

In 1870 Langerhans went on an expedition to Egypt , Syria and Palestine with Heinrich Kiepert to carry out examinations on leprosy patients. During the Franco-Prussian War he worked for the Germans in a military hospital. In 1871 he accepted a position as a pathological prosector at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and completed his habilitation there in the same year with a thesis on the anatomy of sympathetic ganglion cells . Appointed associate professor in 1874, an outbreak of tuberculosis in the autumn forced him to end his scientific career. After spa stays in Italy , Germany and Switzerland had brought no improvement, he settled in Funchal on the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1875 , where he stayed until his death. The mild climate initially led to an improvement in his health, so that he was able to work again as a doctor and opened a medical practice in Funchal in 1879. This is how he treated Alfred Ebart (1848–1883), whose widow Margarethe (1852–1933) he married after his death.

During his time in Madeira, Langerhans became interested in the marine animals and plants of the Portuguese coast. Among other things, he examined a new worm species from the class of polychaete that he his friend Virchow honor Virchowia called. He also wrote a handbook for Madeira in 1885 , in which he reported, among other things, on the climate of the archipelago and the associated healing options for tuberculosis.

While the tuberculosis was progressing, Langerhans fell ill with nephritis in February 1887 , of which he died at the age of forty. He was buried in Funchal in the English cemetery, the Cemitério Britânico , where his grave, tended by the German Dermatological Society , can still be visited today. The German Diabetes Society has been awarding him the Langerhans plaque for achievements in diabetes research since 1978.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul Langerhans  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Langerhans, Paul. 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. 824.
  2. ↑ Paul Langerhans: About the nerves of the human skin. In: Virchows Archiv , Volume 44, Berlin 1868, pp. 325–337 ( hathitrust.org ).
  3. ↑ Hans Schadewaldt:  Langerhans, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 593 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Paul Langerhans - at the grave of the German pathologist. (No longer available online.) Thieme Publishing Group, archived from the original on January 11, 2008 ; Retrieved November 7, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Langerhans, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pathologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 20, 1888
Place of death Funchal , Madeira