Paul Guttmann

Paul Guttmann (9 September 1834 in Ratibor (Polish: Racibórz) – 24 May 1893 in Berlin) was a German-Jewish pathologist.

Paul Guttmann (1834-1893)

He studied medicine in Berlin, Würzburg and Vienna, earning his doctorate in 1858. From 1859 he worked in Berlin, where he later became an assistant to Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868). In 1879 he replaced Heinrich Curschmann (1846-1910) as director of the Moabit Hospital, where one of his students was pediatrician Hugo Neumann (1858-1912). From 1885 to 1893 he was an editor of the Journal für praktische Aerzt.

He is remembered for work with neurologist Albert Eulenburg (1840-1917) involving research of the sympathetic nervous system. With Eulenburg he published Die Pathologie des Sympathicus auf physiologischer Grundlage, a work that was considered at the time to be the best written book on the pathology of the sympathetic system from a physiological basis. As a result of this publication, the two physicians were awarded the 1877 Astley Cooper Prize. However, this honor was later overturned due to a technicality that the book had two authors.

Guttmann also made contributions in his research of tuberculosis and malaria. With Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), he discovered that the histological stain, methylene blue had effectiveness against malaria.

Selected works

• Die Pathologie des Sympathicus auf physiologischer Grundlage, Albert Eulenburg and Paul Guttmann - Essay on the sympathetic nervous system.
• "A handbook of physical diagnosis: comprising the throat, thorax, and abdomen"; by Paul Guttmann, translated from the third German edition by Alex Napier.
• Die Wirksamkeit to kleiner Tuberkulindosen they gegen Lungenschwindsucht. (with Paul Ehrlich) Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, Berlin, 1890, 16:793-795.
• Ueber die Wirkung des Methylenblau bei Malaria. (with Paul Ehrlich) Berliner klinische Wochenschrift, 1891, 28:953-956.

References

• Meridian Institute A Historical Sketch Of The Developmental Knowledge Of The Sympathetic Nerves
• Paul Ehrlich @ Who Named It

See also: Guttmann

• Parts of this article are based on translation of equivalent articles at the German and Polish Wikipedia.