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Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld

Born  1842
Died  1899

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German physician, born May 2, 1842, Cluvensieck near Rensdburg; died November 19, 1899, Leipzig.

Biography of Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld

Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld attended the University of Leipzig, particularly as a pupil of Karl August Wunderlich (1815-1877) and Ernst Leberecht Wagner (1828-1888). Already before graduation he worked in a cholera hospital under Wunderlich. He received his doctorate at Leipzig in 1867, and subsequently worked as an assistant under Wagner in the Leipzig pathological institute until 1869. That year he left the institute in Leipzig to become assistant in the mental asylums of Colditz and Sonnenstein.

In 1870 he returned to pathology to become prosector at the city hospital in Dresden. In 1871 he became teacher of pathological anatomy at the military Fortbildungskurses, in 1875 Medizinalrat in the Medizinal-Kollegium, and in 1881 also assumed leadership of the mental ward at the Dresden Hospital.

On April 1, 1885, Birch-Hirschfeld was appointed Julius Cohnheim's (1839-1884) successor in the chair of pathological anatomy at Leipzig. He made important contributions to bacteriology, with tuberculosis his main interest in infectious diseases.

As early as in 1886 Birch-Hirschfeld attracted a severe inflammation of the lung that eventually took his life in 1899, when he was 57 years old.

His son Arthur Birch-Hirschfeld, born 1871, was professor of ophthalmology at Königsberg.

Bibliography

  • Die Entstehung der Gelbsucht neugeborener Kinder. [Virchows] Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medizin, Berlin, LXXXVII.
  • Die Skrophulose.
    In: Hugo Wilhelm von Ziemssen, et al: Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie. Volume XIII; 2nd edition.
  • Über die Krankheiten der Leber und Milz.
    In: Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt (1833-1902): Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten. volume IV, 2. (6 volumes in 16. Published by C. Gerhardt. Tübingen, H. Laupp, 1877-1893).
  • Lehrbuch der pathologischen Anatomie.
    Leipzig, 1877; 2nd edition, 1882 and 1883; 5th edition, 1896 and 1897.
  • Über de Pforten der placentaren Infektion des Fötus.
  • Übergang von Tuberkelbazillen aus dem mütterlichen Blut auf den Fötus.
    [Ziegler’s] Beiträge zur pathologischen Anatomie und zur allgemeinen Pathologie, Jena, 1890.
  • Über sarkomatöse Drüsengeschwulst der Niere im Kindesalter.
    [Ziegler’s] Beiträge zur pathologischen Anatomie und zur allgemeinen Pathologie, Jena, 1898.
  • Über den Sitz und die Entwicklung der primären Lungentuberkulose.
    Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medizin, Leipzig, 1899, LXIV.
  • Grundriss der allgemeinen pathologie. Leipzig, 1892.
  • Wissenschaft und Heilkunst.
    Report to the 2. allgemeine Sitzung der Münchener Naturforscher-Versammlung on September 29, 1899. His last publication.

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