In the history of medicine, Nikolaus Friedreich is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Nikolaus Friedreich as German pathologist and neurologist (1825–1882).
Nikolaus Friedreich was born at Würzburg in 1825. His recorded nationality is Kingdom of Bavaria. He trained at University of Würzburg.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
His posts were held at University of Würzburg and Heidelberg University.
The recorded fields of work are medicine, internal medicine and pathology.
The test of medical work is whether practice changed, not whether the argument was elegant.
That the work was done from Kingdom of Bavaria matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Nikolaus Friedreich died in 1882, aged 57. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
Achievements
- Held posts at University of Würzburg and Heidelberg University
- Fields: medicine, internal medicine and pathology
