Hermann Kümmell

Hermann Kümmell was a German surgeon, born in Korbach in Waldeck-Pyrmont on 22 May 1852. He took his medical doctorate in Berlin in 1875 and worked as assistant to Max Schede at the Friedrichshain municipal hospital. In 1883 he became chief physician of the surgical department at the Marienkrankenhaus in Hamburg, and in 1895 surgeon-in-chief of the Allgemeines Krankenhaus Hamburg-Eppendorf; he was a professor of surgery at the University of Hamburg from 1919. His work covered fractures, bone implants, diseases of the spine, and disorders of the bladder, kidney and chest. He was among the first to advocate removing the appendix in recurrent appendicitis and in 1886 attempted the first choledochotomy, an opening of the common bile duct. His name lives on in Kümmell's disease, delayed post-traumatic collapse of a vertebra, and Kümmell's point. He died on 19 February 1937.