Otto Kohlrausch

Otto Kohlrausch was a German medical doctor and surgeon, born in Barmen on 20 March 1811 and died on 14 November 1854. He studied natural sciences at the University of Bonn and medicine at the University of Göttingen, then visited hospitals in Copenhagen and London before starting a medical practice in Hanover in 1835. In 1841 he established a health spa at Bad Rehburg on behalf of the government. His name survives in anatomy: Kohlrausch valves are the transverse rectal folds, and Kohlrausch muscle is a term for any of the longitudinal muscles of the rectal wall. He belonged to a distinguished family of scientists and scholars, was the uncle of the physicist Friedrich Kohlrausch, and was the father of Christian Georg Kohlrausch, who rediscovered the discus throw.