Adolf Schmidt

Adolf Schmidt attended the Gymnasium in Bremen and then studied mathematics, natural sciences and medicine at the universities of Jena, Tübingen, Berlin, and Bonn. He obtained his doctorate in 1889 at Bonn, where he worked as an assistant from 1890. During the years 1891 to 1893 he worked in the university polyclinic in Breslau under Friedrich von Müller (1858-1942), and 1893/1894 as a voluntary physician in the Berlin Charité under Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt (1833-1902).

In 1894 Schmidt obtained a position as an assistant physician at the medical polyclinic in Bonn under Friedrich Schultze (1848-1934). He was habilitated for internal medicine in Bonn that year, becoming titular professor in 1899. From 1902 Schmidt was head physician at the Städtisches Krankenhaus Friedrichstadt in Dresden. In 1906 he accepted an invitation to Halle, where he took over the internal clinic the following year and was appointed full professor. In 1908 he took over the medical clinic. He was several times dean of the medical faculty at the University of Halle.

During World War I Schmidt served as a staff physician, later chief staff physician to the militia. For this he received the Iron Cross II Class and the Friedrichskreuz from the Duchy of Anhalt.

Adolf Schmidt was a leading physician in the field of the pathology of the intestines, particularly concentrating his efforts in finding new diagnostical and therapeutical methods. He was an advocate of freezing as a method of preserving meat. From 1912 he was the publisher of Zentralblatt für innere Medizin.

Schmidt was a member of several academies in Europe and the USA. In 1913 he gave the Harvey lecture at the Harvey Society of New York. He was made Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by the University of Maryland in Baltimore.

On June 1, 1918 Schmidt was appointed ordinarius in Bonn, but died already in November that year from a rapidly progressing nervous disease. It is assumed that he took his own life.

• Die Physiologie der Nierensekretion. Doctoral dissertation, University of Bonn, 1889.
• Die Faeces des Menschen.
  With Julius Strasburger. Berlin, 1901-1902; 4th edition, 1915.
• Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Pathologie und Therapie innerer Krankheiten.
  Berlin, 1903.
• Die Funktionsprüfung des Darms mittels der Probekost.
  Berlin, 1904; translated into English and French.
• Klinische Diagnostik und Propädeutik innerer Krankheiten. With Hugo Lüthje (1870-1915). F. C. W. Vogel Verlag, Leipzig, 1910. 2nd, expaned edition, Leipzig, 1915.
• Klinik der Darmkrankheiten.
  2 volumes. Wiesbaden 1912-1913. 2nd edition published by Carl Harko von Noorden (1858-1944). München, J. F. Bergmann, 1921.
• J. Strasburger:
  Adolf Schmidt. Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift, 1918, 65: 1412-1413.
• Isidor Fischer, publisher:
  Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte der letzten fünfzig Jahre.
  Berlin – Wien, Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1932. Page 1395.