Philipp Franz von Walther

Philipp Franz von Walther (1782 to 1849) was a German surgeon and ophthalmologist, born in Burrweiler. He studied medicine in Vienna under Georg Joseph Beer and Johann Peter Frank and took his medical doctorate in 1803 at the university at Landshut. He later held professorships at Bamberg, Landshut, Bonn (1818 to 1830) and Munich, and his students included Johannes Peter Müller, Johann Lukas Schönlein and Cajetan von Textor. He is best known for pioneering work in ophthalmology and ophthalmic surgery: in 1826 he described the first tarsorrhaphy, a closure of part of the eyelids for partial ectropion, and in his treatise on spots of the cornea he gave an early account of corneal opacity. With Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe he co-edited the Journal der Chirurgie und Augenheilkunde, an influential journal of surgery and eye medicine, and he is credited with numerous experiments in medical galvanism. He died in Munich in December 1849.