Karl Ewald Hasse

Karl Ewald Hasse was a German physician and professor of special pathology, born in Dresden in 1810 and died in Hanover in 1902, the son of the historian Friedrich Christian August Hasse. He studied medicine at the medical-surgical academy in Dresden and at the University of Leipzig, earned his doctorate in 1833, continued his education in Paris and Vienna, and received his habilitation at Leipzig in 1836. He became an associate professor of pathological anatomy there in 1839, moved to Zürich in 1844 as medical director of the cantonal hospital and professor of pathology, was appointed professor of special pathology at the medical clinic of the University of Heidelberg in 1852, and held the same position at Göttingen from 1856, serving as medical director until 1878. His anatomical description of the diseases of the organs of circulation and respiration was translated into English in 1846, and he also wrote on smallpox and cowpox vaccination and on diseases of the nervous system. He was instrumental in the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt's decision to enter the field of nervous diseases.