Adolf Weil (physician)

Adolf Weil (1848 to 1916) was a German physician, born in Heidelberg, after whom Weil's disease is named. He studied medicine at Heidelberg and continued his education in Berlin and Vienna, and from 1872 to 1876 was assistant to Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs in Berlin. In 1886 he was appointed professor of special pathology and therapy at the Imperial University of Dorpat, but he resigned soon afterward when tuberculosis of the larynx cost him his voice permanently. He later lived and worked in Ospitaletto, San Remo and Badenweiler before settling in Wiesbaden in 1893, where he died. In 1913, with Emil Abderhalden, he isolated the alpha-amino acid norleucine, and his writings include a treatise on the auscultation of arteries and veins from 1875 and a handbook and atlas of topographical percussion from 1877. He died shortly after learning that a spirochete causes Weil's disease.