41 Facts About Theodor Bilharz

Theodor Maximilian Bilharz was a German physician who made pioneering discoveries in the field of parasitology.

Theodor Bilharz's contributions led to the foundation of tropical medicine.

Theodor Bilharz is best remembered as the discoverer of the blood fluke Schistosoma haematobium, the causative parasite of bloody urine known since ancient times in Egypt.

Theodor Bilharz further discovered that it was the eggs and not the flukes that caused the disease.

Theodor Bilharz unknowingly discovered another related blood fluke, later identified as Schistosoma mansoni, the most prevalent human helminth.

Theodor Bilharz's father Josef Antony Bilharz, a councilor of the exchequer, was an advisor to the Prince Karl Anton of Hohenzollern.

Theodor Bilharz was the eldest of nine children, four of who died at infancy.

Theodor Bilharz studied at the local school in Sigmaringen and completed his secondary education in 1843 with the highest score.

Theodor Bilharz developed keen interest in geology, biology and poetry.

Theodor Bilharz's surviving poem Die Trane des Seraphs was composed during his school days.

Theodor Bilharz scored the highest in Latin, Greek and Hebrew in his class.

Theodor Bilharz soon developed a passion in natural science mainly from the library and specimens he inherited from his great uncle Kaspar Zollikofer von Altenklingen, a reputed Swiss biologist.

Theodor Bilharz became closely associated with Wilhelm Griesinger, a neurologist and psychiatrist who was working as an internist at Tubingen at the time.

Theodor Bilharz passed the state exam in 1849 to obtain a license as medical doctor.

Theodor Bilharz responded to the Wali that he would accept the appointment only if his former student Theodor Bilharz was appointed as his assistant.

Theodor Bilharz was still waiting for his medical certificate, and recounted that he could not sleep the night he received the official appointment out of excitement.

Theodor Bilharz held the position of senior consultant for the department of internal medicine, and enlisted in the military where he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Theodor Bilharz thereby became the first person to legally perform autopsies in Egypt as the first chief of surgery.

In 1852, Griesinger left Egypt and Theodor Bilharz became professor of medicine in his place.

The next year, Theodor Bilharz was appointed as chief surgeon of internal diseases.

Theodor Bilharz was replaced by Antoine Clot from Marseille.

In 1856, Clot allowed Theodor Bilharz to become professor of anatomy.

Theodor Bilharz took charge as medico-legal adviser to the Egyptian government.

In 1851, Theodor Bilharz discovered a novel intestinal flatworm from an infected child in Cairo.

Theodor Bilharz's specimen became the first known helminth in the family Heterophyidae.

In 1851, during an autopsy, Theodor Bilharz discovered an obvious worm from the portal vein connecting the urinary tract of a dead soldier.

Theodor Bilharz knew it has similarities to other flukes, especially the two mouth-like suckers, for which he immediately used the name Distomum, a Greek for two mouthed.

Theodor Bilharz was able to find the male fluke rolled itself up to form a canal in which the female resided, and he named the canal as gynaecophoric canal.

Griesinger had thought that the fluke caused dysentery, but Theodor Bilharz found that it was responsible for urinary tract diseases including haematuria as well.

Theodor Bilharz made the first vivid diagrammatic description of the worms and the eggs on 1 December 1881 in a letter to von Siebold.

Theodor Bilharz then published in the following volume of the same journal the complete description of the parasite structure and the disease it caused.

Theodor Bilharz referred to the disease as "endemic haematuria of warm climates" and the "dysenterische Veranderung des Dickdarms".

Theodor Bilharz reported his observations in the journal Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift in 1856.

Theodor Bilharz wrote to von Siebold that some of the eggs were different in having terminal spines while some had lateral spines.

Theodor Bilharz noted that the adult flukes were different in anatomy and number eggs they produced.

Theodor Bilharz's drawings depicted which were later identified as those of S mansoni adults.

Theodor Bilharz discovered and made detailed description of the nervous system of electric fishes responsible for producing electric fields.

Theodor Bilharz returned to Germany in 1858 to visit his hometown and former universities, and giving lectures at Vienna.

Theodor Bilharz made a brief trip to upper Egypt in the winter of 1859 around the Red Sea, where he noticed a good research opportunity.

Theodor Bilharz spent seven months there with his brother, Richard Alexander Alfons, who had just completed his medical degree at the University of Vienna.

Theodor Bilharz's is in Old Cairo next to that of Hans Eisele, a Nazi concentration camp doctor, who was convicted by the US military court for crime against humanity.