Theodor Escherich

Theodor Escherich (1857 to 1911) was a German-Austrian pediatrician and professor at the universities of Graz and Vienna. Born in Ansbach, he studied medicine at Würzburg, Kiel and Berlin, qualified in 1881 and took his doctorate in 1882, then did bacteriological research in Vienna and Munich and was sent to Naples during the cholera epidemic of 1884. In 1886 he published a monograph on the intestinal bacteria of infants and their relation to digestion, which became his habilitation treatise and contained the first description of the bacterium he called bacterium coli commune, later named Escherichia coli. From 1890 he directed the St Anna children's clinic in Graz and made it one of the best known pediatric hospitals in Europe, and from 1902 he led the St Anna Children's Hospital in Vienna. In 1903 he founded the Infant Defence Society and began a prominent campaign for breastfeeding. He received honorary memberships of several pediatric societies and the title of Hofrat in 1906, and he died in Vienna in 1911.