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Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich (1815-1877) was a German physician, pioneer psychiatrist, and medical professor. He is known for his measurement of mean healthy human body temperature of 37°C (98.6°F), now known more accurately to be about 36.8°C (98.2°F).[1]
He was born in Sulz am Neckar on August 4, 1815 and attended grammar school in Stuttgart. At the age of eighteen he began his medical studies at Tübingen University, where he completed his final exams in 1837. In 1838 he worked as assistant at St Catharine's Hospital in Stuttgart, and wrote his MD thesis. Two years later he wrote his MD habilitation on internal medicine at Tübingen University
In 1846 he was appointed Professor (ordentlicher Professor) and head of the general hospital at Tübingen. Four years later he moved to Leipzig University as Professor and Medical Director of the university hospital. There he introduced clinical pedagogy, combined with a rigorous methodology of diagnosis, and empirical observation of patients. He introduced temperature charts into hospitals, holding that fever is not a disease, but a symptom. The thermometer he used was reportedly a foot long, and required 20 minutes to register the temperature.
He was known for his lectures on psychiatry and the on the "pathology and therapy of illnesses of the nervous system." In 1871 he was appointed to the Department of Medicine's organisational commission for the construction and design of psychiatric hospitals.
He died in Leipzig on September 25, 1877.
References
- ^ Mackowiak, P. A.; S. S. Wasserman, M. M. Levine (1992-09-23). "A critical appraisal of 98.6 °F (37.0 °C), the upper limit of the normal body temperature, and other legacies of Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich". JAMA 268 (12): 1578–1580. doi:. Retrieved on 2007-08-22. The conversion of 37°C to Fahrenheit should have conserved Wunderlich's two significant figures, thus the standard ought to have been 99 °F (37 °C) until its recent empirical correction.
External links
- Archives for the History of Psychiatry in Leipzig online
- (German) "Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich und die Universitätsklinik St. Jakob", from the History of the University of Leipzig. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 31 July 2008, at 12:42.
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