- A dictionary of medical eponyms

Hermann Friedrich Stannius

Born  1808
Died  1883

Related eponyms

German physiologist, born March 15, 1808, Hamburg; died January 15, 1883, Sachsenburg.

Biography of Hermann Friedrich Stannius

Hermann Friedrich Stannius was the son of a merchant, Johann Wilhelm Julius Stannius, and the former Johanna Flügge. After attending the Johanneum in Hamburg, he began his medical studies at the Akademisches Gymnasium there in 1825. To complete his studies, Stannius went to Berlin in 1828 and then to Breslau, where he finished a doctoral dissertation in comparative anatomy on November 26, 1831. He returned to Berlin, where he became an assistant at the Friedrichstädter-Krankenhaus (1831-1837) while working as a general practitioner. Stannius was habilitated as Dozent here. Simultaneously he investigated a great number of questions in entomology and pathological anatomy.

On October 3, 1837, Stannius, then aged twenty-nine, was offered an appointment as full professor of comparative anatomy, physiology, and general pathology at the Rostock University and as director of the institute for the same fields. Besides these disciplines he also taught histology.
He also became a member of the Grossherzogliches Mecklenburg-Schwerin Medizinal-Kollegium in Rostock, replacing Samuel Gottlieb von Vogel (1750-1837) and from 1860 held the title of Obermedizinalrat.

Although he had been in poor health since 1843, he succeeded to the rectorship of the university in 1850 and carried out much fruitful scientific research until 1854. Beginning in 1854 his illness, a serious nervous disease, connected with mental disturbances, grew worse, and in 1862 it obliged him to abandon his work. The last twenty years of his life were spent in a mental hospital at Sachsenburg.

Although his health and his position at the university allowed Stannius to undertake scientific work for only seventeen years, he nevertheless gained a reputation in various fields of research. He first worked in entomology, dealing with the structure of the diptera and with deformities of insects.

In Berlin his main work was in general pathology. His outstanding monograph was the second volume of Lehrbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie der Wirbeltiere (1846). He also investigated the nervous system and the brains of sturgeons and dolphins (1846, 1849), and he conducted pharmacological studies on the effects of strychnine and digitalis (1837, 1851).

He was a long-time friend of Rudolph Wagner (1805-1864), an anatomist, zoologist and physiologist at Göttingen University. Of the contributions he undertook to write for Wagner’ Dictionary of Physiology, he was able to finish only the article on fever (1842), which he said resulted from a “changed mood” of the nervous system.

Bibliography

    A bibliography of forty of Stannius’ papers is in Royal Society, Catalogue of Scientific papers, V, 797-798.
  • De speciebus nonnullis Mycethophila vel novis vel minus cognitis.
    Bratislava, 1831.
  • Beiträge zur Entomologie, besondere in Bezug auf Schlesien, gemeinschaftlich mit Schummel. Breslau, 1832.
  • Über den Einfluss der Nerven auf den Blutumlauf.
    [Froriep’s] Notizen aus dem Gebiete der Natur- und Heilkunde, 1833, 36: 246-248.
  • Ueber einige Missbildungen an Insekten. [Müller’s] Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1835: 295-310.
  • Allgemeine Pathologie. Berlin, I, 1837.
  • Ueber die Einwirkung des Strychnins auf das Nervensystem. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1837: 223-236.
  • Ueber Nebennieren bei Knorpelfischen. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1839: 97-101.
  • Ueber krankhafte Verschliessung grösserer Venenstämme. Berlin, 1839.
  • Ueber Lymphhezen der Vögel. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1843: 449-452.
  • Ueber den Bau des Delphingehirns. Rostock, 1845.
    Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Naturwissenschaften, (Hamburg, 1846, I: 1-16.
  • Bemerkungen über das Verhältniss der Ganoiden zu den Clupeiden.
    Rostock, 1846.
  • Beiträge zur Kenntniss der amerikanischen Manati’s. Rostock, 1846.
  • Lehrbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie der Wirbeltiere.
    2 volumes, Berlin, Veit & Co.,1846-1848. 2nd edition, 1852.
    Carl Theodor Ernst von Siebold (1804-1885) wrote the first volume, Stannius the second.
  • Untersuchungen ueber Muskelreizbarkeit. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1847: 443-462. Also 1849: 588-592.
  • Versuch über die Function der Zungennerven.
    Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1848.
  • Beiträge zur Geschichte des Enchondroms.
    Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1848.
  • Das peripherische Nervensystem der Fische, anatomisch und physiologisch untersucht. Rostock, 1849.
  • Ueber eine der Thymus entsprechende Drüse bei Knochenfischen.
    Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1850.
  • Ueber Theilung der Primitivröhren in den Stämmen, Aesten und Zweigen der Nerven.
    Archiv für physiologische Heilkunde, Stuttgart, 1850; IX.
  • Versuche über die Ausscheidung der Nieren.
    Archiv für physiologische Heilkunde, Stuttgart, 1850; IX.
  • Ueber die Wirkung der Digitalis und des Digitalin.
    Archiv für physiologische Heilkunde, Stuttgart, 1851, 10: 177-209.
  • Zwei Reihen physiologischer Versuche. Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medizin, Berlin, 1852: 85-100. Partial translation in John Farquhar Fulton's (1899-1960) Selected Readings in the History of Physiology, 2nd. Edition, 1966: 59-60.
  • Untersuchungen über Leistungsfähigkeit der Muskeln und Todesstarre.
    Archiv für physiologische Heilkunde, Stuttgart, 1852; XI.
  • Beobachtungen über Verjüngungsvorgänge im thierischen Organismus.
    Rostock, 1853.
  • Fieber. Article in Rudolf Wagner, editor: Handwörterbuch der Physiologie mit Rücksicht auf physiologische Pathologie.
    Braunschweig, 1842-1853.
  • J. Pagel:
    Biographisches Lexicon der hervorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker.
    Berlin-Wien, 1934; 2nd edition, volume V, page 390.
  • Wilhelm Stieda:
    Hermann Stannius und die Universität Rostock 1837-1854. Jahrbuch des Vereins für mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1928, 93: 1-36.
  • Richard N. Wegner:
    Zur Geschichte der anatomischen Forschung an der Universität Rostock.
    Wiesbaden, 1917, pp. 127-128.
  • Axel Wilhelmi:
    Die mecklenburgischen Ärzte von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegewart.
    Schwerin, 1901: 107-108.

What is an eponym?

An eponym is a word derived from the name of a person, whether real or fictional. A medical eponym is thus any word related to medicine, whose name is derived from a person.

What is Whonamedit?

Whonamedit.com is a biographical dictionary of medical eponyms. It is our ambition to present a complete survey of all medical phenomena named for a person, with a biography of that person.

Disclaimer:

Whonamedit? does not give medical advice.
This survey of medical eponyms and the persons behind them is meant as a general interest site only. No information found here must under any circumstances be used for medical purposes, diagnostically, therapeutically or otherwise. If you, or anybody close to you, is affected, or believe to be affected, by any condition mentioned here: see a doctor.