Theodor Bilharz

Theodor Bilharz

Theodor Maximilian Bilharz (born March 23, 1825 in Sigmaringen , † May 9, 1862 in Cairo , Egypt ) was a German medic , doctor and scientist .

Life

Theodor Maximilian Bilharz was the son of Sigmaringer Hofkammerrat Joseph Anton Bilharz, who was born in 1788 in the Catholic Herbolzheim im Breisgau . The mother Elsa Fehr came from the Swiss Thurgau and was a staunch Zwinglian . His younger brother Alfons Bilharz (1836–1925) followed in the footsteps of his older brother and, after spending 13 years in North America, took over the position of medical director of the Fürst-Carl-Landesspital in Sigmaringen.

Theodor Bilharz was already interested in nature as a schoolboy, undertook entomological studies at an early age and also had a small natural history cabinet and a butterfly collection . Inspired by a Swiss uncle who left him books and exotic collectibles, his research drive was reinforced. He attended the Fürstlich Sigmaringer Gymnasium and from 1844 completed a two-year medical degree at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau , where Friedrich Arnold was his first influential teacher. Arnold, wrote Bilharz later, had "kindled the pit light of anatomical research" for him . In addition to medicine, he studied everything that interested him: philosophy , ethics , German language, literary history , archeology , ancient art history, classical philology , botany , anatomy and anthropology . From 1845 to 1849 he studied at the University of Tübingen . There he studied botany with Hugo von Mohl , internal medicine and pathology with Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich , surgery with Victor von Bruns and gynecology with Franz Xaver Breit . In 1847 his treatise on the blood of invertebrates was awarded a prize.

This was followed by the medical state examination, which he passed in Sigmaringen in 1849; then he studied again in Freiburg, where he worked on the comparative anatomy of invertebrates with Carl von Siebold . He was awarded Dr. med. PhD.

In 1850 he followed Wilhelm Griesinger, who had been appointed director of the Egyptian medical system, as an assistant to Cairo, where he later became chief physician at various hospitals. He also taught at the Cairo Medical School, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and major in 1855.

In March 1862 he accompanied Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on his trip to Egypt and treated his wife Alexandrine von Baden , who had typhus . He infected himself and died a few weeks later in Cairo. Other sources name Massaua / Eritrea as the place of death.

In his hometown of Sigmaringen, a school and a pharmacy are named after the doctor. The lunar crater Bilharz is also named after him.

research

Grave of Bilharz in the German cemetery in Old Cairo

Bilharz made great scientific achievements as a helminthologist (researcher of worm diseases). In 1851, for example, he wrote about Distomum haematobium , a worm whose eggs he found in the urine of patients and whose larvae were found in the water of the Nile. The Berlin anatomist Heinrich Meckel (1822-1856) named this species in 1856 in honor of the discoverer Bilharzia haematobium (today Schistosoma haematobium ).

As a result, the clinical picture of the blood urine dysfunction, which was widespread in Africa at the time, was referred to as " schistosomiasis ". His discovery made it possible for the first time to successfully treat the disease after it broke out. During the First World War, the term was replaced by the term Schistosomiasis in the course of the politically induced cleansing of the English language from German loanwords and names , the generic name Bilharzia was replaced by the generic name Schistosoma introduced by David Friedrich Weinland in 1858 . The causative agent of urogenital schistosomiasis is now called Schistosoma haematobium . German-speaking medicine adopted this language regulation after the Second World War, with a view to the inevitable internationalization of specialist terminology.

In 1857 Bilharz wrote a much-noticed work on the "electrical organ" and the nerve and ganglion cells of the trembling catfish . These descriptions inspired the Berlin physician Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) and gave the young electrophysiology important impetus. Bilharz also undertook research trips in Egypt during which he described, among other things, an African tetra as a new species (today valid as Brycinus macrolepidotus Valenciennes, 1849).

Fonts

• Alestes macrolepidotus, a new Nile fish. In: Session reports of the mathematical and natural science class of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (Vienna). 9 (1852), pp. 169-172.
• The electric organ of the trembling catfish, anatomically described by Theodor Bilharz. Engelmann, Leipzig 1857.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Wolfgang U. Eckart : Theodor Maximilian Bilharz. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart, Christoph Gradmann (Hrsg.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present. 3. Edition. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin / New York 2006, p. 47. Ärztelexikon 2006 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .

literature

• Löwenberg:  Bilharz, Theodor . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 636 f.
• Maximilian Watzka:  Bilharz, Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 237 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Christian H. Freitag: In memoriam Theodor Bilharz. In: Hohenzollerische Heimat. 1/1997, p. 10.
• Ernst Senn: Theodor Bilharz. A German researcher's life in Egypt 1825–1862. Stuttgart 1931.
• Angelika Althoff: Scientific correspondence from and with Theodor Bilharz. 1980.
• Gordon Ethelbert Ward Wolstenholme (Ed.): Ciba Foundation Symposium Bilharziasis held in Commemoration of Theodor Maximilian Bilharz. 1962.
• Ilse Jahn (Ed.): History of Biology. 1998.
• Klaus-Peter Burkarth: Theodor Bilharz. In: Writings on political regional studies in Baden-Württemberg. H. 23: (Hohenzollern) pp. 480-486. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart.
• Werner Köhler : Bilharz, Theodor Maximilian. In: Werner E. Gerabek et al. (Ed.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 179.

Web links

• Literature by and about Theodor Bilharz in the catalog of the German National Library