Abstract
THEODOR LANGHANS, an eminent German pathologist, who with the physician Sahli and the surgeon Kocher formed a triumvirate which made the Berne medical school famous, was born at Usingon, Nassau, on September 28, 1839. He received his medical education at Heidelberg; Göttingen, where he was a pupil of the celebrated anatomist Henle; Berlin, where he studied under Virchow, Trauber and Frerichs; and Wörzburg, where he qualified in 1864 with a thesis on the structure of tendons and served as assistant to von Recklinghausen until 1867. He then went to Marburg, where he collaborated with Lieberkölin and Wagner in anatomical research. In 1868 he described the giant cells in tubercle to which his name has been given, and it was during his stay in Marburg that he carried out some important investigations on the absorption of extravasations and the formation of pigment. In 1872 he was appointed professor of morbid anatomy at Giessen, but in the same year succeeded Klebs in the corresponding chair at Berno, where he did valuable work on the morbid histology of the female breast, the histology of the placenta, the distribution of glycogen in normal and diseased organs, and described the cellular layer of the chorionic epithelium to which his name has been given. He also collaborated with Kocher in a study of diseases of the testicle. His later years were mainly devoted to researches on the morbid anatomy of goitre and cretinism. He retired from his chair two years before death, which took place on October 22, 1915.
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Theodor Langhans (1839–1915). Nature 144, 546 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144546b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144546b0