1. Carl Wernicke is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and the study of receptive aphasia, both of which are commonly associated with Wernicke's name and referred to as Wernicke encephalopathy and Wernicke's aphasia, respectively.
Carl Wernicke obtained his secondary education at the Konigliche Gymnasium in Oppeln and the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium in Breslau.
Carl Wernicke then studied medicine at the University of Breslau and did graduate work studying language and aphasia at Breslau, Berlin, and Vienna.
In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out, where Carl Wernicke served as an army surgeon.
In 1875, Carl Wernicke was appointed the first assistant in the Charite in Berlin under Karl Westphal, where he stayed until 1878 studying psychiatry and nervous diseases.
In 1878 Carl Wernicke founded a private neuropsychiatric practice in Berlin and published numerous articles until he left the practice in 1881.
In 1904, Carl Wernicke worked at the University of Halle, heading its Psychiatry and Neurology Clinic.
Carl Wernicke died on June 15,1905, due to injuries suffered from a bicycle accident in the Thuringian Forest.
Carl Wernicke was heavily inspired by the research on language and communication coming from Paris, France, specifically from Paul Pierre Broca.
Carl Wernicke began to question the relationship between dysphasia and the location of lesions that caused brain damage resulting in language problems.
Carl Wernicke categorized sensory aphasia as fluent but disordered speech, impaired understanding of speech, and impaired silent reading.
Carl Wernicke hypothesized that motor activity was accompanied by sensory stimulation and that there were fibers connected the motor and sensory cortexes in the brain, so there must be a connection between the lesioned areas contributing to sensory and motor aphasia.
Carl Wernicke discussed the problems with severing this connection, assuming both structures remain intact.
Carl Wernicke additionally discussed the dangers of mistaking sensory aphasia with a confused or psychotic state, and he emphasized the importance of distinguishing between aphasia and agnosia, the failure to recognize objects, which was described by Sigmund Freud in 1891.
Carl Wernicke proposed a theory of localization and suggested that different identifiable regions of the brain control different behaviors and these areas interact to produce more behaviors.
Broca and Carl Wernicke's work paved the way for others to study and identify localized areas of the brain, including the identification of the motor homunculus as well as the theory that brain damage in specific areas is responsible for different disorders, diseases, and abnormal behaviors.
Lichtheim's work analyzed language abilities and categorized language disorders into seven different aphasias, Carl Wernicke's aphasia being one of them.
Carl Wernicke then adopted Lichtheim's aphasia classification and became the Carl Wernicke-Lichtheim model.
At the 59th Breslau conference in 1892, Karl Kahlbaum described paranoia based on a case study that Carl Wernicke was familiar with.
Carl Wernicke described the case study as an example of what he called the "elementary symptom," which is the notion that there is a single, fundamental symptom and all other symptoms are derived from the elementary symptom.
Carl Wernicke himself did not pursue research on the elementary symptom theory because of his devotion to aphasiology.
One of the fundamental problems with the elementary symptom theory is that Carl Wernicke described anxiety as the elementary symptom of many disorders.
Lastly, Carl Wernicke preserved traditional German psychiatry and described clinical vignettes, being unable to distinguish between physical and psychological causes of symptoms instead of using Kraepelin's approach of delineation of syndromes and disorders.