Adolf Kussmaul

Adolf Kussmaul (1822-1902) was a German physician and a leading clinician of nineteenth century internal medicine, holding professorships at several German universities over a long career. He pioneered direct examination of the digestive tract, developing gastric lavage and pleural tapping as clinical procedures and making early attempts at esophagoscopy and gastroscopy, in 1868 examining a patient stomach directly using a rigid tube. He described conditions that carry his name: Kussmaul breathing, the rapid, deep, labored breathing pattern seen in severe diabetic ketoacidosis, and Kussmaul's sign, a paradoxical rise in jugular venous pressure during inspiration associated with constrictive pericarditis and related heart conditions. With Rudolf Maier he provided one of the first clinical descriptions of polyarteritis nodosa, sometimes called Kussmaul disease. He is also credited with early clinical descriptions of what was later termed word blindness, or dyslexia.