Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1894

FRANZ VON LEYDIG (1821-1908) Lehrbuch der Histologie des Menschen und der Thiere. Meidinger 1857 xii, 551 pp., illus. 23 cm.

Leydig began his university studies in philosophy at Munich in 1840. In 1842 he moved to Würzburg to study medicine and was awarded his medical degree there in 1847. He remained at Munich and the following year became Kölliker's (see No. 1848) assistant in physiology and also taught developmental anatomy and histology. By 1855 he was a professor and in 1857 he accepted the chair of zoology at Tübingen. He became professor of comparative anatomy at Bonn in 1875 and retired from that institution in 1887. He is best known for his description of the interstitial cells of the testes that furnish the internal secretion of the testicle. He also described a mucous cell in fish epidermis and a larval amphibian that did not release its secretions over the epithelial surface. He made numerous other contributions to the literature of his day achieving commendable results with the still-developing microscope. Leydig published the present work while he was at Tübingen. It followed Joseph von Gerlach's (1820-1896) Handbuch der allgemeinen und speciellen Gewebelehre des menschlichen Körpers (Mainz, 1848) and Kölliker's work (see No. 1848) and established Leydig as a leader and founder of comparative microscopic anatomy. Gerlach and Kölliker confined their work to human histology whereas Leydig covered a much broader segment of the animal kingdom.

See Related Record(s): 1848

Gift of John Martin, M.D.