August Förster (physician)

August Förster was a German anatomist who became a professor of pathological anatomy. He was born in Weimar on 8 July 1822 and died in Würzburg on 15 March 1865. He was educated at the University of Jena between 1841 and 1845, became an associate professor at the University of Göttingen in 1852, and moved in 1858 to the University of Würzburg as full professor of pathological anatomy. His investigations of pathological histology and of teratology, the study of malformations, were widely noted. In 1854 he gave an early description of the crystals later called Charcot-Leyden crystals, and in 1862 he described what would later become known as Meckel syndrome. His publications include a textbook of pathological anatomy that reached a tenth edition in 1875, an atlas of microscopic pathological anatomy issued between 1854 and 1859, an outline of the encyclopedia and methodology of medicine from 1857, and a systematic book on human malformations from 1861, known for its meticulous illustrations.