Ludwig Traube (physician)
Encyclopedia
Ludwig Traube was a German physician and co-founder of the experimental pathology in Germany.

Biography

Ludwig Traube was a son of a Jewish wine merchant. At an age of only 17 years he left in 1835 the gymnasium in Ratibor. He studied medicine in Breslau, 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...

 and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. Among his teachers were Jan Evangelista Purkyně
Jan Evangelista Purkyne
Jan Evangelista Purkyně was a Czech anatomist and physiologist. He was one of the best known scientists of his time. His son was the painter Karel Purkyně...

 (1787-1869) and Johannes Müller
Johannes Müller
Johannes Müller, Johann Müller or Hans Müller may refer to:* Johannes Müller von Königsberg , known as Regiomontanus, German mathematician and astronomer* Johannes von Müller , Swiss historian...

 (1801-1858). Besides medicine, he was very active in philosophical studies; he especially appreciated the philosophy of Spinoza. In 1840 he received his doctorate („Specimina nonnulla physiologica et pathologica“), a work about pulmonary emphysema. Then he moved to Vienna to broaden his knowledge (Baron Carl von Rokitansky (1804-1878) und Joseph Škoda (1805-1881). Since 1841 he was assistant of a physician for paupers in Berlin. In 1848 he became an unsalaried lecturer and in 1849 the first civilian assistant of Johann Lukas Schönlein
Johann Lukas Schönlein
Johann Lukas Schönlein was a German naturalist, and professor of medicine, born in Bamberg. He studied medicine at Landshut, Jena, Göttingen, and Würzburg...

 (1793-1865) at the Charité
Charité
The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....

. Ludwig Traube was involved as physician during the revolutionary occurrences in 1848. The later well-known botanist Nathanael Pringsheim
Nathanael Pringsheim
Nathanael Pringsheim was a German botanist.-Biography:Nathanael Pringsheim was born at Landsberg, Prussian Silesia, and studied at the universities of Breslau, Leipzig, and Berlin successively...

 (1823-1894), who was a friend of Traube, was arrested during the fighting. Another friend of Pringsheim was severely wounded, but saved by the help of Ludwig Traube. In 1853 Traube became the leading physician of the pulmonary department at the Charité and later chief of the propaedeutic
Propaedeutics
Propaedeutics or propedeutics is a historical term for an introductory course into a discipline: art, science, etc. Etymology: pro- + Greek: paideutikós, "pertaining to teaching"....

 clinic. He was also teacher at the military-medically seminaries. At the hospital of the Jewish community in Berlin he was head physician of the internal medicine department. Traube's Jewish ancestry was a great handicap for his career, but despite this he became in 1857 an adjunct professor, and in 1862 ordinary professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Institute in Berlin. In 1866 he got the title “Geheimer Medizinalrath” and in 1872 he was appointed a professor at the University of Berlin. Ludwig Traube had a coronary disease, which led to death. His grave is at the Jewish cemetery Berlin Schönhauser Allee.

Ludwig Traube was the elder brother of Moritz Traube
Moritz Traube
Moritz Traube was a German chemist and universal private scholar....

, who was an extraordinary private scholar and a pioneer of physiological chemistry. The Berlin physician Moritz Litten
Moritz Litten
Moritz Litten was a German physician who was a native of Berlin. He was a son-in-law to pathologist Ludwig Traube ....

 (1845-1907) was his son-in-law. Ludwig Traube married Cora Marckwald, and they had 3 daughters and 2 sons. It was an impressing happening, when a son died from diphtheria the age of 5 years. Another son, Ludwig Traube (palaeographer)
Ludwig Traube (palaeographer)
Ludwig Traube was a paleographer and held the first chair of Medieval Latin in Germany . He was a son of the physician Ludwig Traube ....

 (1861-1907), was a palaeographer. His nephews Wilhelm Traube
Wilhelm Traube
Wilhelm Traube was a German chemist.- Biography :Traube was born at Ratibor in Prussian Silesia, a son of the famous private scholar Moritz Traube....

 (chemist, 1866-1942) and Albert Fraenkel
Albert Fraenkel
Albert Fraenkel was a German physician who helped establish Streptococcus pneumoniae as a cause of bacterial pneumonia and championed intravenous ouabain for use in heart failure...

 (physician, 1848-1916) belong also to the scholars-family Traube-Litten-Fraenkel.

Assessments

Ludwig Traube earned great fame and honours by his establishing experimental pathophysiological research in Germany (e.g. he did animal experiments in the 1840s in his Berlin flat in the Oranienburger Str.) He improved the physical-medical methods like auscultation
Auscultation
Auscultation is the term for listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a stethoscope...

 and percussion and was a taxonomist of the medical documentation. (e.g. inaugural of the temperature-pulse-frequency of respiration-curve into clinical praxis). He investigated the pathophysiology of respiration and the regulation of the body temperature, and gave a scientific basis to digitalis
Digitalis
Digitalis is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennials, shrubs, and biennials that are commonly called foxgloves. This genus was traditionally placed in the figwort family Scrophulariaceae, but recent reviews of phylogenetic research have placed it in the much enlarged family...

 therapy. The narrow coherencies between heart and kidney diseases have been well demonstrated. He worked together with 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), they substantiated the „Beiträge zur experimentellen Pathologie“.

Acknowledgments

The University of Leiden awarded Ludwig Traube the honorary doctorate in 1875.
In the areal of Charité was built in 1878 a memorial monument.
A street of Ratibor was named "Dr. Traubestraße“ in 1927.
Some eponymous are associated to Ludwig Traube and describe clinical phenomena of auscultation, palpation and percussion:
Traube's bruit, Traube's corpuscles, Traube's double tone, Traube's dyspnea, Traube's plugs, Traube's pulse, Traube's space and Traube-Hering-Mayer waves.

Sources and literature

  • Nachlass TRAUBE-LITTEN. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Handschriftenabt.
  • Traube, Ludwig.: Briefe an Virchow (Literaturarchiv der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, NL-Virchow 2188, 9 Bl.
  • Berndt, H.: Ludwig Traubes Beitrag zur Nephrologie. Zeitschr. Urol. Nephrol. 79 (1986) 171-174
  • Jüdisches Lexikon. Berlin (1930) 1034-1035
  • Winninger, S.: Große Jüdische Nationalbiografie. Bd. 6, Bukarest (1936) 125-126
  • Henrik Franke: Moritz Traube (1826-1894) Vom Weinkaufmann zum Akademiemitglied, "Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Chemie", Band 9, Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte Dr. Michael Engel, ISBN 978-3-929134-21-6

External links

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