- A dictionary of medical eponyms

Georg Axhausen

Born  1877-03-24
Died  1960

Related eponyms

    German face and jaw surgeon, born March 24, 1877, Landsberg an der Warthe; died 1960.

    Biography of Georg Axhausen

    Georg Axhausen is noted as the first to use the word aseptic necrosis. In his time there were no antibiotics and necrotic bone was frequent. In an article he published in 1910, Axhausen wrote that necrosis occurred at the bone-ends of every fracture, and that this stimulated and was replaced by periosteal proliferation. He also believed that focal necrosis of subchondral bone caused changes in the overlying articular cartilage, which lead to "arthritis deformans". It was not until the 1950's that Axhausen's term of aseptic necrosis was replaced by the term avascular necrosis.

    Axhausen studied at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Akademie in Berlin. After obtaining his medical doctorate in 1901, he worked at the surgical clinic in Kiel under Heinrich Helferich (1851-1945) from 1904 to 1906, then 1907-1908 at the institute of pathology at the Friedrichshain hospital in Berlin under Ludwig Pick (1868-1944), and from 1909 to 1924 at the surgical clinic at the Charité under Otto Hildebrand (1858-1927). He was habilitated in 1908, conferred the title of professor in 1912, extraordinarius in Berlin 1920. Axhausen concerned himself in particular with the pathology and surgery of bones and joints, with the histological laws of bone grafting, necrosis of the epiphysis, arthritis deformans, etc.

    Bibliography

    • Histologische Studien über die Ursachen und den Ablauf des Knochenbaus im osteoplastischen Karzinom.
      Virchows Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medizin, Berlin, 1909, 195: 358-462.
    • Atlas der Operationsübungen. München 1914.
    • Chirurgie des Anfängers. Berlin 1923.
    • Technik und Ergebnisse der Gaumenplastik.
      Leipzig, Thieme, 1936. 126 pages.
    • Die Kriegswundbehandlung in Kiefer-Gesichtsbereich; hrsg. im Auftrag der Deutschen Zahnärzteschaft.
      2nd edition, München, Lehmann, 1941. 89 pages.
    • Allgemeine Chirurgie in der Zahn-, Mund- und Kieferheilkunde.
      3rd edition, München, Hanser, 1947. 461 pages. (Forms v. 6, Zahnärztliches Lehbruch.)

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