Leonard Landois

Leonard Landois was a German physiologist, born in Münster on 1 December 1837 and dying on 17 November 1902. He studied medicine at the University of Greifswald and later became a professor there and director of its institute of physiology. His early research dealt with parasitology, including studies of bed bugs, dog fleas and a parasitic tapeworm, and he also examined how cartilage, tendon and connective tissue ossify. With his teacher Ludwig Julius Budge he investigated cardiac arrest under electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve. He is best remembered as a pioneer of blood transfusion research: in 1875 he showed that red cells from one animal species mixed with serum from another usually clump and sometimes burst. His textbook of human physiology and his treatise on transfusion were influential, and he was a member of the Leopoldina academy from 1866.