Otto von Bollinger

Biography of Otto von Bollinger

Otto Bollinger studied in Munich, Vienna and Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate in 1868. He subsequently worked as an assistant to professor Ludwig von Buhl (1816-1880). He was habilitated in 1870 and taught at the Tierärtzliche Hochschule in Zürich. In 1874 he was called to the position of professor extraordinary at the Tierarzneischule in Munich. In 1880 he succeeded Buhl as professor of general pathology and pathological anatomy at the University of Munich.

In 1877, Bollinger described the etiologic agent of bovine actinomycosis ("lumpy jaw"), which was soon afterwards called actinomyces bovis.

In 1891 Bollinger provided an early description of a delayed traumatic apoplexy he called traumatische Spät-Apoplexie. Today this condition is called delayed traumatic intracerebral hematoma or (DTICH). His research was based on four patients who suffered a head injury, in which death occurred days to weeks later from an apoplectic event.

Bollinger was known for his studies of rabies and hydrophobia in the days before the discovery of an anti-rabies vaccine. From a series of collected statistics states that of patients bitten by dogs undoubtedly rabid 47% died, the rate being 33% in those whose wounds had been cauterized and 83% when there had been no local treatment. In England in 1895, 668 dogs, besides other animals, were killed and certified to be rabid, and the deaths from hydrophobia were twenty.

Bollinger is credited with describing the inclusion bodies found in tissue cells in fowlpox. These bodies contain the fowlpox virus, and are now referred to as Bollinger bodies. Another eponymous term named after him are Bollinger granules, which are small yellowish-white granules that cluster, contain micrococci, and are seen in the granulation tissue of botryomycosis.

Otto Bollinger was co-founder and editor of the journal Deutsche Zeitschrift für Tiermedizin und vergleichende Pathologie.