Albert Hoffa

Albert Hoffa (1859 to 1907) was a German surgeon, orthopedist and physiotherapist who was born in Richmond, in the Cape of Good Hope. He studied medicine at Marburg University and the University of Freiburg and earned his doctorate with a thesis on lead nephropathy. In 1886 he opened a private clinic for orthopedics, physiotherapy and massage in Würzburg, where he became an associate professor at the university in 1895, and in 1902 he succeeded Julius Wolff at the department of orthopedics in Berlin. He is remembered for introducing an operation for congenital hip dislocations in 1890 and for developing a system of massage therapy that is called the Hoffa system. His name is also attached to Hoffa's fat pad, an anatomical structure, and to Hoffa's fat pad disease, a condition marked by chronic knee pain beneath the patella. In 1892 he founded the journal Zeitschrift für orthopädische Chirurgie, and his writings include textbooks on fractures and luxations, on orthopedic surgery and on massage technique.