Karl Thiersch

Karl Thiersch, also spelled Carl Thiersch, was a German surgeon born in Munich in 1822 who died in 1895. The son of the educationist Friedrich Thiersch and a son-in-law of the chemist Justus von Liebig, he took his doctorate at Munich in 1843, served as prosector of pathological anatomy there, and became professor of surgery at Erlangen in 1854 and at Leipzig in 1867. He served as a surgeon in the First War of Schleswig and as a medical consultant in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1865 he showed that carcinoma has an epithelial origin, against the view of Rudolf Virchow. He modified Joseph Lister antiseptic technique by using salicylic acid in place of carbolic acid, and his name remains attached to Thiersch graft, a method of split-skin grafting.