Wilhelm Frederick von Ludwig

Wilhelm Frederick von Ludwig (1790 to 1865) was a German physician from Württemberg, remembered for his 1836 paper on the condition now called Ludwig's angina, which a colleague named Angina Ludovici a year later. He was born in Uhlbach near Stuttgart, the son of a clergyman who taught him as a child, and at fourteen began studying medicine under a surgeon. He went on to study surgery, medicine and obstetrics at the University of Tübingen, won a gold medal from King Frederick I in 1809 and took his doctorate in 1811. In 1812 he served as a military doctor and field hospital director during the Russian campaign, caught typhus and was captured by the Russians, and after his release in 1814 directed a typhus hospital at Hohenheim. He became professor of surgery and obstetrics at Tübingen in 1815, then a personal physician to King Wilhelm I, was recognized as a great diagnostician, and rose to chief physician of the royal family in Stuttgart. He retired in 1855 and died in December 1865.