The Langenbuch Paper. I. An Historical Perspective and Comments of the Translators

Abstract

We are pleased that our translation of Langenbuch's classical and seminal article (1) is published in GASTROENTEROLOGY a century after its publication in Berlin. This anniversary has also been noted in the Archives of Surgery in a commentary by Sparkman who reviews aspects of Langenbuch's life (2). Langenbuch's report began the modern era in the management of biliary disease. His description of the first successful cholecystectomy is astonishingly modern, and his rationale for the procedure is that used today by surgeons to defend cholecystectomy as the treatment of choice for cholelithiasis (3). In fact, a translation of this paper was published in America in the Louisville [Ky.] Medical News only 4 months later (4). This translation was authored by Samuel Brandeis, a graduate of the University of Vienna, who had emigrated to America from Germany with Adolph Brandeis, the father of Louis Brandeis, after the revolution of 1848 (5). Brandeis' translation is adequate, but the Louisville Medical News ceased publication at the turn of the century, and copies are extremely scarce. Carl Langenbuch was born in Kiel in 1846 and had his surgical training in Berlin under Wilms. He became Surgeon-in-Chief at the Lazarus Krankenhaus in Berlin, and his Department was just next to the Department of Medicine, where he would observe patients suffering from chronic, recurrent bouts of biliary colic. He gradually came to the