Friedrich Jolly

Friedrich Jolly (1844 to 1904) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist, born in Heidelberg, the son of the physicist Philipp von Jolly. He studied medicine at Göttingen under Georg Meissner and took his doctorate at Munich in 1867, then worked as an assistant at the mental institution in Werneck and at the Juliusspital in Würzburg. In 1873 he became director of the psychiatric clinic at Strasbourg, succeeding Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and in 1890 he became director of the neuropsychiatric clinic at the Charité in Berlin, succeeding Karl Westphal. He is remembered for early research on myasthenia gravis, including the electrophysiological study of abnormal fatigue that underlies Jolly's test, and he is credited with coining the name myasthenia gravis pseudoparalytica. He also wrote an influential treatise on hypochondria and a work of 1884 on the electrical conduction resistance of the human body, fundamental to electrical diagnostics.