Wilhelm Heinrich Erb

Wilhelm Heinrich Erb was a German neurologist, born in Winnweiler on 30 November 1840 and died in Heidelberg on 29 October 1921. He took his medical degree at Heidelberg University in 1864 and served as assistant to the pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich, later holding the chair of special pathology at Leipzig from 1880 and succeeding Friedreich at Heidelberg in 1883. He began in toxicology and histology but became one of the leading neurologists of the nineteenth century, using electrodiagnostic testing extensively. In 1875 he described the knee-jerk reflex, independently of Karl Westphal, and helped popularize the reflex hammer. He described myasthenia gravis in 1878, studied tabes dorsalis and its link to syphilis, wrote more than 250 medical works, and gave his name to Erb's palsy and Erb's point.