Heinrich Averbeck

Heinrich Averbeck (1844 to 1889) was a German physician from Bremen who became an early advocate of physical therapy. He took his medical doctorate at the University of Basel in 1868, after studying at Heidelberg, Göttingen and Tübingen as well, and from 1868 to 1879 he worked as a general practitioner and obstetrician in his home city. In 1879 he opened an institute for physical therapy at Baden-Baden, and from 1882 he developed a spa and clinic at Bad Laubach near Koblenz that was described as a model institution of physical medicine. Averbeck held that a suitable combination of therapeutic exercise and massage was vital in the treatment of chronic illness. His writings include a work on medical gymnastics (1882), a study of massage in liver disease (1885) and a treatise on acute neurasthenia (1886), which Sigmund Freud is reported to have found a useful reference. He was the brother-in-law of the neurologist Otto Binswanger.