Georg Otto Ledderhose (15 December 1855 – 1 February 1925) was a German surgeon, professor and pioneering traumatologist. Born in Bockenheim, Frankfurt am Main, he studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Göttingen. Ledderhose is best known for identifying and describing Ledderhose's disease, a condition affecting the plantar fascia of the foot. He made significant contributions to the fields of surgery, traumatology, and orthopedics throughout his career.
Biography
Early life
He was born in the Bockenheim district of Frankfurt am Main. His father was the politician and university rector
Karl Ledderhose (26 March 1821 - 1 January 1899) and his mother was Wilhelmine
Justine Charlotte (nee Pfeiffer; 21 October 1826 - 29 June 1892). Wilhelmine's father was
Johann Georg
Heinrich Pfeiffer (14 December 1781 - 27 January 1859), the third son of Johann Jakob Pfeiffer, and brother of Burkhard Wilhelm, Carl Jonas, and Franz Georg Pfeiffer.
Two of Ledderhose's uncles, the husbands of his mother's sisters, were the chemist Friedrich Wöhler and the
jurist Otto Bähr, and another of his mother's sisters was the mother of the Prussian cavalry general Adolf von Deines.
[ At the time of Georg's birth, his father Carl was serving as a magistrate in the Hessian municipal court, and by 1865, when Georg was only ten years old, Karl had risen to the rank of Electoral Finance minister.]
Education
Ledderhose studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg under Georg Albert Lücke, as well as the University of Göttingen under his uncle Friedrich Wöhler. In 1876, while at Göttingen, Ledderhose was enjoying a dinner of lobster with his uncle Freidrich and his professor Felix Hoppe-Seyler, when his uncle suggested that he take the remains of the lobster back to the laboratory.[Georg Ledderhose (1876) "Über salzsaures Glycosamin" On, Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, 9(2): 1200-1201.][W. N. Haworth, W. H. G. Lake, and S. Peat (1939) "The configuration of glucosamine (chitosamine)," Journal of the Chemical Society, pages 271-274.]
Career and later life
Ledderhose received his medical degree from the University of Strasbourg in 1880, after which he practiced surgery at the Hôpital Civil. In 1886, Ledderhose was sent from Strasbourg to Paris, along with other eminent European doctors, including Karl Theodor, Duke in Bavaria, to study the novel techniques of Dr. Louis Pasteur.[“Paris.” The British Medical Journal 1, no. 1319 (1886): 714–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25275599.] In 1890, Ledderhose married Marie Caroline Pauline Emma Scharrer (30 June 1868 – 21 January 1950), great-granddaughter of the merchant, banker, and sometime burgermeister of Nuremberg . Emma's brother was the celebrated dramaturg and biographer Eduard Scharrer-Santen (1869-1942).
-
Elisabeth (5 July 1893 – 27 May 1985)
-
Georg (3 September 1895 – 26 February 1994), who followed his father into medicine. The younger Georg and his wife Maria Freundlieb were the parents of the German art historian Lothar Ledderose.
From 1891, he was named a professor in surgery at his alma mater by his mentor Dr. Lücke.[ translated as ] In 1892, Ledderhose was commissioned by the city of Strasbourg to create a Rekonvaleszentenhaus or convalescent center, for those involved in traumatic accidents.[ He remained the director of the Unfallkrankenhaus through the years of the First World War until November 1918, when the victorious French government expelled the majority of Germans living in the territory of Alsace-Lorraine. According to the Alsatian journalist and memoirist Charles Spindler, Ledderhose was known in Strasbourg during the war as a man who provided care and support to the wounded on both sides of the conflict, and who made sure that charitable funds were distributed not only to the Germans, but also the French, and so the French government's summary exile of the doctor came as quite a shock to the populace.][ ]
Legacy
In addition to his work in discovering glucosamine, Ledderhose is perhaps most famous today for being the first to describe the condition of plantar fibromatosis in 1894, which is now known as Ledderhose's disease in his honor.
Publications
-
Über Glykosamin. Trübner, Straßburg 1880 (Dissertation).
-
zur Kenntniss des Verhaltens von Blutergüssen in serösen Höhlen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der peritonealen Bluttransfusion. Trübner, Straßburg 1885.
-
Die chirurgischen Erkrankungen der Bauchdecken und die chirurgischen Krankheiten der Milz (= Deutsche Chirurgie. Bd. 45b). Enke, Stuttgart 1890.
-
Die ärztliche Untersuchung und Beurtheilung der Unfallfolgen. Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1898.
-
Die Arthritis deformans als Allgemeinerkrankungen. Trübner, Straßburg 1915.
-
Chirurgie des Thorax und der Brustdrüse (= Diagnostische und therapeutische Irrtümer und deren Verhütung: Chirurgie. Bd. 1). Thieme, Leipzig 1920.
-
Chirurgie der Wirbelsäule, des Rückenmarks, der Bauchdecken und des Beckens (= Diagnostische und therapeutische Irrtümer und deren Verhütung: Chirurgie. Bd. 2). Thieme, Leipzig 1921.
-
der Unfallverletzungen: Ihre Untersuchung und Begutachtung. Enke, Stuttgart 1921.
