Albrecht Theodor Middeldorpf

Albrecht Theodor Middeldorpf was a German surgeon, born in Breslau in 1824 and dying there in 1868. He studied medicine at the universities of Breslau and Berlin, taking his doctorate in 1846, and learned from teachers that included Jan Evangelista Purkyne, Johannes Peter Müller and Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach. After a year as Purkyne's assistant and a study trip to Vienna and Paris he rose at Breslau to associate professor of surgery and ophthalmology, head surgeon of the Allerheiligen-Hospital and, in 1856, full professor and director of the surgical and ophthalmologic clinic. He treated battle injuries in the Second Schleswig War and the Austro-Prussian War. He is best remembered for standardizing the surgical techniques of galvanocautery, publishing the first monograph on electrical current in surgery in 1854 and winning the Montyon Prize of the Paris Academy of Sciences.