Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1847

AUGUST HIRSCH (1817-1894) Handbook of geographical and historical pathology. New Sydenham Society 1883-1886 Vol. I: xviii, 710 pp., tables; Vol. II: xii, 681 pp., tables; Vol. III: xv, 780 pp., tables. 21.1 cm.

After completing his medical degree at Berlin, Hirsch entered private practice and in 1846 returned to practice in his native city of Danzig and pursue his interest in epidemiological studies. Soon after publication of the present work, he was invited to become a member of the medical faculty at the University of Berlin. Hirsch was serving as professor of special pathology and therapeutics and the history of medicine at the time of his death. He served as a member of commissions appointed by the German government to investigate epidemics of cerebrospinal meningitis, cholera, and the bubonic plague in Astrakhan. Together with Pettenkofer (see No. 1871), Hirsch served as a delegate to the International Sanitary Conference at Vienna in 1874. His most important and lasting contribution to the history of medical biography is the six volume Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte aller Zeiten und Völker (Vienna, 1884-1888). Hirsch's exhaustive study of medical geography met with immediate critical acclaim and remains a classic in its field. He classified his work into sections which covered acute infectious diseases; chronic infective, toxic, parasitic, septic, and constitutional diseases; and diseases of the organs and other body parts. He discussed the history and geographical occurrence of each disease and such factors as climate, altitude, soil constitution, seasonality, electrical phenomena, and social conditions. First published at Erlangen between 1860 and 1864, it has here been translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton (1847-1927), the founder of modern English epidemiology.

See Related Record(s): 1871

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 1778 (1st German ed., 1860-1864); Waller 13678 (2nd German ed., 1881-1886)

Gift of William B. Bean, M.D