Edwin Klebs

Abstract

IN a centennial note published in the New England Journal of Medicine of July 11, Dr. Leona Baum-gartner, of Cornell University Medical College, New York, claims that Edwin Klebs, who was born on February 6, 1834, and died in 1913, was not only one of the pioneers of bacteriology, but also made important contributions to other fields of medicine. In addition to being the first to describe the causal organism of diphtheria in 1875, he described acro-megaly in 1884, two years before Pierre Marie; inoculated primates with syphilis fifteen years before Metch-nikoff; isolated colonies of bacteria on solid media in the form of Sturgen's glue nine years before Koch; was the first to produce tuberculosis experimentally in animals by the injection of milk from infected cows, thereby establishing the bovine origin of the disease; and described the typhoid bacillus before Eberth. Klebs pursued his medical education in his native town of Konigsberg under Rathke, Helm-holtz, Burdach and Werther, and later in Wiirzburg under Virchow, Kolliker, Ley dig and Scanzoni. He led a wandering life, being successively professor at Berne, Wiirzburg, Prague, Zurich and the Rush Medical College, Chicago. His contributions to pathological anatomy and physiology included the first experimental production of valvular disease of the heart and the recognition of bacterial infection in the production of the subsequent endocarditis, the description of hsemorrhagic pancreatitis as a rapidly fatal disease, the introduction of the paraffin embedding method and his textbooks on pathological anatomy (1869-76) and general pathology (1887-89). Klebs also took an active part in the foundation of three important medical journals, namely, the Correspondenz-Blatt fiir Schweizer Aerzte (1871), which some years ago was renamed Schweizer medizinische Wochenschrift, the Archiv fur experi-mentelle Pathologie und PharmaJcologie (1873) and the Prager Medizinische Wochenschrift (1876).