Fritz de Quervain

Fritz de Quervain (1868 to 1940) was a Swiss surgeon, born in Sion, who became a leading authority on thyroid disease. He took his doctorate at the University of Bern in 1892 and some years later directed the surgical department of a hospital in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the canton of Neuchatel. In 1910 he was appointed to the chair of surgery at the University of Basel, and from 1918 he was professor of surgery at Bern and director of the Inselspital. He wrote many papers on thyroid disease, from its epidemiology to the technique of thyroidectomy, and his textbook Spezielle chirurgische Diagnostik was a leading surgical text of its day. He co-developed an operating table that won the Grand Prix at the 1914 World Exhibition in Paris. Two conditions carry his name: de Quervain thyroiditis, a subacute non-bacterial inflammation of the thyroid often following a viral respiratory infection, and de Quervain disease, an inflammation of the sheath around two thumb tendons.