Abraham Kuhn

Abraham Kuhn ( born August 28, 1838 in Bissersheim, Pfalz, † September 15, 1900 in Strasbourg ) was Alsatian physician and professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Strasbourg.

Life

Abraham Kuhn comes from a Jewish family, the vineyard in the Pfalz has been running the legal emancipation of the Jews in the wake of the French Revolution, had Kuhn's grandfather Abraham Loeb -Kuhn (1749-1832) of income from wine and spirits sales to Napoleon's armies in Bissersheim bought a farm. 1854 purchase Kuhns parents, Isaac Kuhn ( 1805-1871 ) and esters, nee Levy, ( 1806-1882 ) a vineyard in Worms, and Kuhn visited the local classical language high school, now Rudi -Stephan -Gymnasium.

After studying medicine in Giessen and Munich, he received his PhD at the University of Würzburg with a thesis on the epithelium of the lung alveoli and learned otology at Anton von Troeltsch, one of the founders of this discipline in Germany. In 1863 he puts in Munich from the medical exam.

After that Kuhn to Strasbourg, for family reasons, as indicated, one of his sisters is married there. He studied at the Academy ( École de Médecine ) in Strasbourg, completed in 1865, the French medical exam and acquire a doctorate with a thesis on tumors of the larynx under the title Des tumeurs du larynx. He translated from Troeltsch's textbook of otology into French, it will appear in 1870 in Paris. In the German - Prussian War of 1870, he has worked for the French Red Cross on the battlefields of Wissembourg and Wörth in the northern Vosges.

After annexation of Alsace by the German Empire in 1871, Kuhn endeavored to work at the Medical Clinic of the renamed Kaiser -Wilhelm- University College in Strasbourg, where it is lecturer in 1873 and in 1881 associate professor of otology. Probably in connection therewith he converted to Christianity. The university is the flagship of German science and culture in the " National Rural Alsace -Lorraine " one of the best equipped German universities, and Kuhn one of the few high school teachers who specialize otology - in Germany there for a list from 1878, ten teachers professors and his young compartment. First, he is head of the Department, from 1881 until his death Director of the Clinic and Policlinic for Ear Diseases. The department is housed in the Civic Hospital ( Civil Hospital ), is an independent university institute in 1892 and 1897 has 32 ​​beds. As assistants and pupils Kuhn's work there, among other things, the future university teacher W. Caraway ( University of Heidelberg ), Paul Manasseh (University of Würzburg) and Gustav Alexander ( 1873-1932 ).

Kuhn is at times a member of the board of the German otological society, today's German Society of Oto-Rhino - Laryngology, Head and Neck Surgery.

Abraham Kuhn's daughter Anna (died 1966) married Albrecht Bethe, Professor of Physiology in Frankfurt am Main, your son is the American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Albrecht Bethe.

Services

Abraham Kuhn is the second generation of the representatives of modern otology, which was established in German-speaking countries, especially by Hermann Schwartze in Halle, Adam Politzer in Vienna and Kuhn's teacher of Tröltsch in the years after 1860 and oriented to the natural sciences methodology, the diseases of the explored ear and treated. He established the subject as an independent medical discipline in Strasbourg and is the founder and first director of the university Throat Clinic.

Focus of Kuhn's scientific work on the fields of comparative anatomy of the ear, especially of the maze, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of tumors of the ear. On these issues, he writes posts published by Hermann Schwartze manual. In the two journals Archives of Otolaryngology and Journal of Laryngology, there are several individual clinical work and releases Kuhn, contributions to the cholesteatoma and for the surgical treatment of adhesions of the soft palate are particularly emphasized in the obituary.

Writings

• Traité pratique des maladies de l' oreille Delahaye Paris in 1870, with translation DMLevi by: Anton Friedrich Freiherr von Troeltsch: Textbook of Otolaryngology
• Histology of the membranous labyrinth of bony fish Leipzig 1878
• Neoplasms of the ear and comparative anatomy of the ear: Hermann Schwartze ( Hrgb. ), Handbook of Otolaryngology FCW Bird in Leipzig 1893