Paul Leopold Friedrich

Paul Leopold Friedrich (1864 to 1916) was a German surgeon and bacteriologist born in Roda in Saxe-Altenburg. He took his doctorate at Leipzig in 1888 and trained under Robert Koch at the Reich Health Office in Berlin before turning to surgery. He taught at Leipzig, then held chairs at Greifswald, Marburg and Königsberg, succeeding August Bier as head of the surgical university hospital at Greifswald. Ferdinand Sauerbruch and Martin Kirschner worked under him as assistants. He is remembered for studies of wound treatment, for showing by experiment that infected tissue should be cut away within about six hours, for work on peritonitis and tuberculosis, for early thoracic surgery, and for introducing seamless rubber gloves in the operating room.