Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff

Biography of Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff

Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff was one of the most productive of the group of German pathologists who flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is specially remembered for describing the reticuloendothelial system and the bodies that bear his name.He studied in Bonn, Strassburg and Göttingen, and graduated from the University of Bonn in 1889. He was conferred doctor of medicine in 1889; in 1894 he was habilitated for pathological anatomy and became Ist assistant at the Institute of pathology in Göttingen under Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen (1833-1910). He became professor of pathology at Marburg 1903 and from 1906 was professor in Freiburg im Bresgau, where he spent the rest of his career, retiring in 1936. At Freiburg he established an institute of pathology that attracted students from all over the world.

Aschoff made important studies on appendicitis, gallstones, jaundice, scurvy, and thrombosis, and wrote classical histological descriptions of rheumatic conditions. He is, however, particularly remembered for having recognised the phagocytic activity of certain cells found in diverse tissues and named them the reticuloendothelial system (1924).

His outstanding textbook on pathological anatomy went through many editions and was used as a standard text for many years.

Aschoff was the publisher of Beiträge zur pathologischen Anatomie und zur allgemeinen Pathologie and Veröffentlichungen aus der (Kriegs-), Gewerbe und Konstitutionspathologie.