Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs

Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs was a German pathologist and clinician born in Aurich in 1819. He took his medical degree at the University of Göttingen in 1841, spent several years back in Aurich working as an optician, and returned to Göttingen as an instructor in 1846. He then held professorships at Kiel from 1850 and Breslau from 1852, and in 1859 he succeeded Johann Lukas Schönlein as head physician at the Charité in Berlin, where he remained until his death in 1885. His students and assistants included Paul Ehrlich, Adolf Weil, Paul Langerhans and Bernhard Naunyn. He is especially known for research on kidney and liver diseases. He published the first German textbook of nephrology, studied Bright's disease under the microscope and identified its three main stages, and gave the first clinical description of the condition now called Wilson's disease. He also did pioneering work on multiple sclerosis, describing nystagmus as one of its symptoms.