Benno Credé

Carl Benno Credé, known as Benno Credé, was a German surgeon born in Berlin on 1 September 1847 who died in Dresden on 14 March 1929. He was the son of the gynecologist Carl Siegmund Franz Credé. He studied medicine at the universities of Zürich and Leipzig, received his doctorate in 1870, took part in the Franco-Prussian War and then served as an assistant in the surgical clinic at the University of Leipzig. In 1877 he opened a private surgical clinic in Dresden, and in 1892 he became a senior physician at the Carolahaus there, where five years later he was named chief physician. From 1901 he was chief senior physician of the surgical department at the new municipal hospital in Dresden-Johannstadt. In the 1890s he introduced colloidal silver, called collargol, as a treatment for infectious conditions, and a salve containing 15 percent soluble metallic silver was known as Unguentum Credé. He wrote on silver and silver salts as antiseptics with J. L. Beyer in 1896.