Conrad Ramstedt

Wilhelm Conrad Ramstedt (1867 to 1963) was a German surgeon remembered for the operation that bears his name. Born in Hamersleben in the Prussian Province of Saxony, the son of a physician, he studied medicine at Heidelberg, Berlin and Halle and qualified in 1894. He served as assistant in the university surgical clinic at Halle from 1895 to 1901, was an army medical officer from 1901 to 1909, and then became chief surgeon at the RafaelKlinik in Münster, a post he held until 1947. On 23 August 1911 he operated on his first case of infantile pyloric stenosis, found that his sutures tore out of the muscle, and chose to cover the cut muscle with an omental patch instead of closing it. This first pyloromyotomy became known as Ramstedt's operation, and he reported it in September 1912. He received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957 and kept operating until failing eyesight stopped him at about the age of 80.