Alfred Goldscheider

Alfred Goldscheider was a German neurologist, born in 1858 in Sommerfeld in the Kingdom of Prussia into a Jewish family. He studied medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Medical-Surgical Institute in Berlin, graduating in 1881, and then spent seven years as a military physician, during which time he also assisted the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond. He later became a professor at the University of Berlin and served as directing physician at the Krankenhaus Moabit from 1894 and at the Virchow-Krankenhaus from 1906. He is best known for his work on the somatosensory system, in particular his study of localized cool and warm spots on the skin and his tests of touch, pain and tickle sensitivity; the terms Goldscheider's test and Goldscheider's percussion come from this research. With Edward Flatau he studied the structure of nerve cells and their changes under stimulation, and he is credited with describing epidermolysis bullosa. He died in Berlin in 1935.