Johann Nepomuk von Nussbaum

Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Nussbaum (2 September 1829 to 31 October 1890) was a German surgeon, a native of Munich. He earned his medical doctorate at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 1853, studying under Karl Thiersch, and afterwards trained in surgery in Paris with Auguste Nélaton, Charles Chassaignac and Jules Maisonneuve and in Berlin under Bernhard von Langenbeck. In the early 1870s he went to England to learn techniques of pelvic surgery from Thomas Spencer Wells. From 1860 until his death he was professor of surgery at Munich, and during the Franco-Prussian War he served as a medical consultant to Bavarian troops. He is remembered for developing new operations and for introducing Lister's antiseptic practices at Munich, where operative infection had previously caused a very high death rate; his book on the antiseptic treatment of wounds was translated into several languages. He also wrote on eye surgery, ovariotomy and bone transplantation, and Nussbaum's bracelet, a device for writer's cramp, is named after him.