Otto Wilhelm Madelung practised at a period when medicine itself was being rebuilt on new foundations.
The record lists Otto Wilhelm Madelung as German surgeon (1846-1926).
Otto Wilhelm Madelung was born at Gotha in 1846. His recorded nationality is Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He trained at University of Bonn and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
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 Bonn, University of Strasbourg and University of Rostock.
The recorded fields of work are medicine and surgery.
Clinical knowledge is accumulated slowly and revised often, usually at some cost.
That the work was done from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Otto Wilhelm Madelung died in 1926, aged 80. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
Achievements
- Held posts at University of Bonn, University of Strasbourg and University of Rostock
- Fields: medicine and surgery
