Ludwig Traube (physician)

Ludwig Traube (1818 to 1876) was a German physician born in Ratibor in Silesia, now Racibórz in Poland, the son of a Jewish wine merchant. He studied medicine at Breslau, Berlin and Vienna, took his doctorate in 1840 with a thesis on pulmonary emphysema, and from 1849 served as the first civilian assistant of Johann Lukas Schönlein at the Charité in Berlin. He became leading physician of the pulmonary department there in 1853, was head physician of internal medicine at the hospital of the Berlin Jewish community, and in 1872 was appointed a professor at the University of Berlin despite the handicap of his Jewish ancestry. He is regarded as a co-founder of experimental pathology in Germany: he carried out animal experiments in his own flat, investigated the pathophysiology of respiration and the regulation of body temperature, worked with Rudolf Virchow, and brought the temperature, pulse and respiration chart into clinical practice. Several clinical signs bear his name, among them Traube's double tone and Traube's space.