Christian Heinrich Pfaff

Christoph Heinrich Pfaff ( born March 2, 1773 in Stuttgart, † April 23, 1852 in Kiel ) was a German physician and university teacher at the Christian- Albrechts- University of Kiel. As a physicist and chemist, he explored the bioelectricity. As a physician he was concerned about the smallpox vaccine and the redesign of the pharmacy system deserves.

Life

Christoph Heinrich was the sixth son of Go. Regional Finance Council Burkhard Friedrich Pfaff. Two of his eleven siblings were Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Andreas Pfaff and Pfaff, university professors were also.

From 1782 to 1793 he attended the Stuttgart Charles Academy, where he studied medicine in the last three years and became friends with Georges Cuvier. In 1793 he wrote the Dissertatio medica de inauguralis electricitate sic dicta animali. Regardless of Alessandro Volta he set up a potential series. End of 1793, he enrolled at the Georg -August- University of Göttingen, where he heard of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Friedrich Benjamin Osiander and Samuel Hahnemann. He designed a manuscript on the four main types to awaken contractions, to which all the rest can be reduced and stood for publication by Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren in conjunction. In 1795 he published a monograph about animal electricity and irritability, and came to terms with the early romantic physicist Johann Wilhelm Ritter, with Goethe's color theory and Julius Robert Mayer's energy principle.

Copenhagen and Kiel

From late autumn 1794 to late summer 1795 Pfaff was in Copenhagen, where he worked on the clinical institutes. Here he met Friedrich Karl von Reventlow. From 1795 to 1797 he was medical attendant of the Count on his trip to Italy. Then he settled as a physician in Heidenheim, the practice was, however, soon disappear. In effort of Reventlow and Philip Gabriel Hensler (1733-1805) he was in the spring of 1798 as ao Professor of Medicine, was appointed for the time being without salary, at the University of Kiel. Still under the influence of the Seniors of the Medical Faculty, Georg Heinrich Weber hung Pfaff of smallpox vaccination with Menschenpockenlymphe ( variolation ) to. So he inoculated 1798/99 in the Provost 234 children. When his family he urged to accept a vacant position as a mining engineer in Württemberg, he was given through the mediation Reventlow commissioned in support of the professor of physics in Kiel, Johann Friedrich Ackermann to take over the lectures on physics, making a salary of 300 Reichstalern and the admission were associated as a full professor in the Faculty of Arts.

Given the high age of the professor of chemistry in Kiel, Kerstens, professor of chemical was promised him, after his death also to obtain. Since this task, he did not feel grown up, he went from spring to late fall 1801 to Paris in order to acquire practical experience. In this he was supported by Georges Cuvier. With some younger Frenchmen he set up a laboratory. Here he learned Volta personally know and was drawn to the meetings of the Commission, was transferred to the testing of Volta 's discoveries.

On his return he took over because Kerstens was now deceased, professor of chemistry and thus came at the same time in the Faculty of Medicine, at the time was attributed to the chemical. Well, as of 1802, Pfaff represented the smallpox vaccination with Kuhpockenlymphe ( vaccination ). In 1802 he commissioned the physician Dr. Friedrich Adolph Heinze with a report on the practice he cowpox in the provost. For this report Pfaff learned from the discovery of the teacher Peter Plett, which he immediately published and reported to the German - Danish Government in Copenhagen. Pfaff later regretted that Weber knew the Plettsche discovery, but was reluctant to apply the new protection products.

Reorganization of the pharmacist being

As 1804, a Medical College for the duchies for thorough organization of pharmacists being built, he joined as a member and secretary, and in 1828 its director. Probably as early as 1806, he noticed a decline in eyesight, and therefore refused appeals to other universities.

In the years 1809-1818 he made ​​several trips to southern Germany and wrong with Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring, Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler, Jöns Jakob Berzelius and Wilhelm Ludwig Gilbert. On a later trip to the Rhine and Switzerland, he met Marc- Auguste Pictet and Charles- Gaspard de la Rive. In 1829 he was in Paris and London, where he found the suggestion of Michael Faraday, William Thomas Brande, William Prout and Hollander. After he had still vivid in 1830 participated in the Assembly of German Natural Scientists in Hamburg, his eyes weakness increased greatly. In 1845 he had to abandon his teaching position.

Honors

  • Rector of the University of Kiel ( 1816/17 and 1828 /29)
  • Dannebrog (1815 )
  • Honorary citizen of Kiel ( 1843)

Works

  • Employees to Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler 's physical dictionary ( EB Schurckert, 1828-1840 ).
  • System of medicine, translated by John Brown: The elements of medicine; 1796
  • Treatise on the means to purify the air; Translator, 1802
  • General Anatomy; Translation of Xavier Bichat: Anatomy générale; 1803
  • The electro-magnetism, a historical-critical view of the recent discoveries of the same on d.Gebiete, together with eigenthüml. Try by C. H. Pfaff; 1824
  • Revision of the theory of electro - Voltaismus esp with regard to Faraday; 1837
  • As to the mineral springs at Bramstedt and some other mineral springs in Holstein
  • Tax of the pharmacist for the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; 1832
Johann Friedrich Pfaff Julius von Mayer Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert Marc-Auguste Pictet Order of the Dannebrog Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
188451
de