Erwin Payr

Erwin Payr (1871 to 1946) was an Austrian-German surgeon, born in Innsbruck. After graduating there in 1894 he worked as an assistant at the first pathological anatomy institute in Vienna, then as an assistant to Carl Nicoladoni at the University of Graz, where he qualified as a university teacher of surgery in 1899. He became chief surgeon at the University of Greifswald in 1907, professor of surgery at Königsberg in 1910, and moved to Leipzig the following year, where he stayed until his retirement in 1937. He was regarded as an excellent surgeon with expertise in every branch of surgery. He was the first surgeon to use ozone to control bacteria, a practice he learned from the Swiss therapist E. A. Fisch, and he published Über Ozonbehandlung in der Chirurgie in 1935. He also introduced absorbable magnesium sutures in vascular and nerve surgery. Payr's disease, the Payr pylorus clamp and Payr's sign of thrombophlebitis are named after him.