Oskar Berger

Oskar Berger studied in Breslau, Berlin and Vienna. His most important teacher was Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868), then Hermann Lebert (1813-1878), Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs (1819-1885), Ludwig Traube (1818-1876), Johann Ritter von Oppolzer (1808-1871), and Josef Skoda (1805-1881). He received his doctorate on August 10, 1867, in Berlin, and from 1869 worked as a specialist in nervous diseases in Breslau. He became Privatdozent at Breslau in 1873, from 1878 he was extraordinary professor, and from 1877 physician-in-chief at the Breslau city poorhouse.

Berger's premature death on July 19, 1885, was caused by an apoplexy following a disturbance of the kidneys. He died in Ober-Salzbrunn, Silesia, where he took a cure.

Oscar Berger was a prominent neuropathologist and the first Privatdozent for nervous diseases at the University of Breslau. His speciality was electrotherapy. His contributions concern the physiology and the pathology of the Nervus thoracicus longus, joint neuralgias, the relationship of neuralgias to diabetes and nephritis, neuralgias of the genital apparatus, occupational neuroses, the treatment of mimic face cramps, etc.

Shortly before his death, Berger lectured in the medical section of the Schlesische Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur on the association of syphilis to tabes, in which he founded his theory of the first as an important prerequisite for the second. During his last years he collaborated with Rudolf Peter Heinrich Heidenhain (1834-1897) in studies of hypnosis.

• De Lähmung des Nervus Thoracicus longus. Breslau, 1873.
• Zur Localisation der corticalen Sehsphäre beim Menschen.
  Breslauer aerztliche Zeitschrift, 1885. In Albert Eulenburg's (1840-1917) Real-Encyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde. Vienna, 1880-1883:
  
• Epilepsie.
  
• Beschäftigungsneurosen.
  
• Paralysis agitans.
  
• Tetanie.