Magnus Huss

Magnus Huss (1807 to 1890) was a Swedish physician and professor, born in Torp in Medelpad. He studied at Uppsala, took his doctorate in medicine in 1835 and became assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute the same year. On 1 August 1839 he opened the first real medical clinic in Sweden at the Serafimerlasarettet in Stockholm, where physical examination by auscultation and percussion was introduced alongside the study of pathological anatomy. He became tenured professor at the Karolinska Institute in 1846 and chaired the Sundhetskollegium, later the National Swedish Board of Health, from 1860 to 1864, remaining general director of the hospitals until 1876. He is best known for coining the term alcoholism in 1849, for the pathological changes in the body caused by long-term alcohol intoxication, set out in his two-volume work Alcoholismus chronicus, which won the 1854 Montyon Prize of the French Academy of Sciences. He has been described as the forefather of Swedish internal medicine.