Jakob Heine

Jakob Heine (1800 to 1879) was a German orthopaedist born in Lauterbach in the Black Forest, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, who died in Cannstatt. He turned to medicine after first studying classical languages and theology, encouraged by his uncle Johann Georg Heine, who ran an orthopaedic institute in Wurzburg, and he took his doctorate in 1827. In the 1830s he opened an orthopaedic institution at Cannstatt near Stuttgart and directed it until 1865, treating patients from all over Europe, with a particular interest in scoliosis, clubfeet and paralysis of the arms and legs, for which he also used washings and gymnastics. He is best remembered for his 1840 study of poliomyelitis, the first medical report on the disease and the first time it was recognised as a clinical entity, which is why polio is often called Heine-Medin disease, after Heine and Karl Oskar Medin. He was made an honorary citizen of Cannstatt and ennobled with the Wurttemberg Order of the Crown.