Benedict Stilling

Benedict Stilling (1810 to 1879) was a German anatomist and surgeon, a native of Kirchhain. He took his doctorate at the University of Marburg in 1832 and afterwards kept a private practice in Kassel, travelling widely in Europe and working in Paris with physicians including Claude Bernard, Jean-Martin Charcot and Jean Zuleme Amussat. His main contributions were to neurology: he studied the structure of the cerebellum and made histological studies of the pons, and in 1840 he first mentioned the vasomotor nerves in a treatise on spinal irritation. He is also remembered for introducing serial sectioning, the cutting of thin successive slices of spinal cord specimens, for microscopic study. He performed the first ovariotomy in Germany using an extraperitoneal technique that limited internal bleeding. Stilling's canal in the eye and the fleece of Stilling in the cerebellum carry his name. His son Jakob Stilling became an ophthalmologist.