Hans Kehr

Hans Kehr, whose full name was Johannes Otto Kehr, was a German surgeon and professor of surgery who lived from 1862 to 1916. Born in Waltershausen in the duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he practised surgery at a private clinic in Halberstadt and from 1910 worked in Berlin. He is remembered for developing operative procedures for diseases of the gall bladder and bile ducts, and in the late nineteenth century he helped popularise the removal of the gall bladder, cholecystectomy, as a treatment for gallstones. He is credited with some 2,600 operations of the biliary tract over his career. His name survives in two eponyms: Kehr sign, pain in the left shoulder associated with a ruptured spleen, and Kehr T-tube, a drain for the bile duct that he popularised. Among his publications are works on the surgical treatment of gallstone disease and on the practice of bile duct surgery, issued between 1896 and 1913.