Carl Ludwig Schleich
Encyclopedia
Surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...
and writer who was a native of Stettin, Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...
.
He studied medicine in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Greifswald
Greifswald
Greifswald , officially, the University and Hanseatic City of Greifswald is a town in northeastern Germany. It is situated in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, at an equal distance of about from Germany's two largest cities, Berlin and Hamburg. The town borders the Baltic Sea, and is crossed...
and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where he was an assistant to Rudolf Virchow
Rudolf Virchow
Rudolph Carl Virchow was a German doctor, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician, known for his advancement of public health...
(1821–1902). In 1887 he received his doctorate at the University of Greifswald, and stayed there as an assistant until 1889. Afterwards he opened a private practice in Berlin, and in 1899 attained a professorship at the University of Berlin. In 1900 he became director of the Department of Surgery at Gross-Lichterfelde
Lichterfelde (Berlin)
Lichterfelde is a locality in the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in Berlin, Germany. Until 2001 it was part, with Steglitz and Lankwitz of the former Steglitz borough.-History:...
.
Schleich is remembered for his work involving local anesthesia
Local anesthesia
Local anesthesia is any technique to induce the absence of sensation in part of the body, generally for the aim of inducing local analgesia, that is, local insensitivity to pain, although other local senses may be affected as well. It allows patients to undergo surgical and dental procedures with...
. In the early 1890s he introduced a methodology of infiltration anesthesia
Local anesthesia
Local anesthesia is any technique to induce the absence of sensation in part of the body, generally for the aim of inducing local analgesia, that is, local insensitivity to pain, although other local senses may be affected as well. It allows patients to undergo surgical and dental procedures with...
by using a highly diluted cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
solution. He was also a pioneer of glial research, and recognized that glial cells played a dynamic role in nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
function. Schleich believed that an interconnected and interactive neuron
Neuron
A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling. Chemical signaling occurs via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. Neurons connect to each other to form networks. Neurons are the core components of the nervous...
al-glial network was a substrate for brain functions.
Among his written works was an influential treatise on hysteria
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
research called Gedankenmacht und Hysterie. Schleich was also an accomplished poet and novelist. One of his better known fictional works was the popular Phantasien über den Sinn des Lebens, which translates to "Fantasy about the Meaning of Life".
His memoirs Besonnte Vergangenheit (1922) are the most successful memoirs in the German language, running well above 1 million copies. The book laid the commercial foundations of the German editor Ernst Rowohlt
Ernst Rowohlt
Ernst R. Rowohlt was a German publisher who founded the Rowohlt publishing house in 1908 and headed it and its successors until his death...
.