Hermann Nothnagel

Carl Wilhelm Hermann Nothnagel (1841 to 1905) was a German internist who built his career in the university clinics of nineteenth century Germany and Austria. Born at Alt-Lietzegoericke near Baerwalde in Brandenburg, the son of a pharmacist, he studied in Berlin under Ludwig Traube and Rudolf Virchow, then worked as an assistant to Ernst Viktor von Leyden at Koenigsberg, where he qualified to lecture in internal medicine in 1866. After service as a military physician he held posts at Breslau, Freiburg and Jena, where he became full professor at the medical clinic in 1874, and from 1882 until his death he was professor at the university clinic in Vienna. In 1876 he described the irregular pulse of atrial fibrillation, which he called delirium cordis, and Nothnagel's syndrome, an oculomotor palsy with contralateral cerebellar ataxia, carries his name. He edited the 24 volume handbook Specielle Pathologie und Therapie.