Robert Friedrich Wilms

Robert Friedrich Wilms was a German surgeon, born in Arnswalde (today Choszczno in Poland) in 1824 and died in 1880. He studied medicine in Berlin and in 1848 became an assistant at the Bethanien Hospital there. He served as a physician at the hospital from 1852 and from 1862 as its chief physician, and he was a catalyst in establishing Bethanien as a center of learning for students and young surgical assistants; among his better known assistants were Edmund Rose, Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke, Ernst Georg Ferdinand Küster and Werner Körte. During the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars he distinguished himself as a consultant surgeon-general. He is credited with reintroducing tracheal surgery for problems caused by diphtheria and with his work on urethrotomy, surgery of the urethra. While still a student he joined an expedition headed by Johannes Peter Müller to Helgoland, where he researched chaetognaths, the topic of his thesis.