Georg Perthes

Georg Perthes was a German surgeon and a pioneer of X-ray diagnosis, born in Moers in 1869 and died in Arosa, Switzerland, in 1927. He received his medical doctorate at Bonn in 1891, worked as a surgeon in Bonn and Leipzig, and in 1910 became head of the surgical clinic at Tübingen. In 1900 and 1901 he served as a military surgeon at the German port of Qingdao in China. His main research concerned radiology in treatment, and he pioneered the use of radiation for warts, skin cancer and breast carcinoma. He is best known for Perthes disease, an avascular necrosis of the hip joint in children, whose first X-rays he took in 1898. He also introduced suction drainage for empyema and the pneumatic cuff for bloodless limb surgery, and a vein test bears his name.