Fathers of orthopaedics in Germany (eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries): Lorenz Heister in Helmsted; Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in Berlin; Heine and family in Würzburg

Abstract

In orthopaedic medicine in Germany, Lorenz Heister, practicing in the eighteenth century, is considered one of the fathers of German surgery and is renowned for his books on management of hemorrhage, wounds, fractures, bandaging, instrumentation and surgery. After Heister, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, orthopaedic medicine in Germany developed uniformly. In a period when few doctors were interested in a separate discipline of orthopaedics, Germany led in this field. Heine devoted himself to the development of the new profession of orthopaedics, and in 1816, he opened the first orthopaedic institute on German soil in the former monastery of St. Stephen, which later became known as the Karolinen-Institut. Along with Heine and his family, the special development of orthopaedics in Berlin may be attributed to the work of Dieffenbach who, in 1832, became professor at the University of Berlin and in 1840 director of the Clinical Institute for Surgery at Charité Hospital.