Theodor von Dusch

Theodor von Dusch was a German physician, born in Karlsruhe on 17 September 1824, the son of the Baden statesman Alexander von Dusch. He studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where his teachers included Jacob Henle, Karl von Pfeufer and Maximilian Joseph von Chelius. He earned his doctorate in 1847 and qualified as a university lecturer in medicine in 1854. In 1870 he became professor and director of the policlinic at Heidelberg. In the 1850s, working with Heinrich Schröder, he demonstrated that a filter made of cotton wool removes microbes such as bacteria from air. He also wrote influential works on thrombosis of the cerebral sinuses, which was translated into English in 1861, and on heart disease, including a textbook of heart disease and studies of the diseases of the myocardium and the endocardium. He died on 13 January 1890.