Ludwig Karl Georg Pfeiffer

Ludwig Karl Georg Pfeiffer (1805 to 1877), also called Louis Pfeiffer, was a physician of Kassel who turned into a zoologist and botanist. After medical studies at Göttingen and Marburg and his doctorate, he went to Paris and Berlin for further training and returned to Kassel in autumn 1826 to begin practice. In 1831 he answered an appeal sent from Poland to German doctors and served as a staff physician at Lazienka, Pomorce and Warsaw, where he worked devotedly during a cholera epidemic; his small book of experiences from the Warsaw hospital argued that cholera was not transmissible. Soon after he gave up medicine for natural science. Most of his many writings concern shells (conchology), and he also published on cacti and on the flora of Hesse, and travelled to Cuba in the winter of 1838 to 1839. In 1875 his medical diploma was renewed on the fiftieth anniversary of his doctorate.