Ludolf von Krehl

Ludolf von Krehl (1861 to 1937) was a German internist and physiologist born in Leipzig, the son of the Orientalist Christoph Krehl; the von was added to his surname when he was ennobled in 1904. After studying at Heidelberg and Leipzig and working as an assistant at the Leipzig medical clinic, he headed the clinic at Jena from 1892, directed the one at Marburg from 1899, held chairs at Greifswald, Tübingen and Strasbourg, and then returned to Heidelberg, where he was professor and director of the medical clinic from 1907 to 1932. His research dealt with cardiac pathology and metabolic diseases, and he took a psychosomatic interest in disease, admiring the psychoanalytic work of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer. His textbook on pathological physiology, first published in 1893 and eventually issued in fourteen editions, gave clinical medicine a scientific basis. He was a catalyst behind the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, now the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg.