Karl August Burow

Karl August Burow, born Karl Heinrich August Burow in Elbing in 1809 and died in Königsberg in 1874, was a German surgeon and ophthalmologist. He studied at the University of Königsberg from 1830, habilitated there in 1839 and became an associate professor in 1844. In 1846 he opened a private clinic in the city, where he worked in ophthalmology and surgery, and in 1859 he gave up his chair and became a Sanitätsrat, a medical officer. He served as consulting physician to Prussian armies in 1866 and again in 1870. He was the first surgeon in East Prussia to carry out Dieffenbach's operation for strabismus and is credited with new methods of blepharoplasty and cheiloplasty. Surgeons still speak of Burow's triangle, a wedge of skin and fat removed so that an advancement flap lies flat, and he argued strongly for treating wounds open. Burow's solution, an astringent and antiseptic preparation of aluminium subacetate and acetic acid, bears his name. His writings include studies of the physics of the eye, strabismus operations, a lateral-triangle method of transplanting tissue and work on spectacle lenses.