Alexander von Winiwarter

Alexander von Winiwarter (1848 to 1917) was an Austrian-Belgian surgeon, a native of Vienna and brother of the physician Felix von Winiwarter. He took his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1870 and worked as a surgical assistant under Theodor Billroth, then headed the surgical department of the Crown Prince Rudolf Children's Hospital. In 1878 he moved to Belgium as professor of surgery at the University of Liège and later acquired Belgian citizenship. He is remembered for introducing specialised massage and compression procedures for lymphedema, a technique the Danish physiotherapist Emil Vodder refined in 1932 into what became known as manual lymphatic drainage. His writings include studies of carcinoma statistics, bile duct surgery and surgical diseases of the skin.