Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918)

Abstract

Ludwig Edinger, a German neurologist is considered as one of the founders of modern neuroanatomy. He was conferred the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of Strassburg. His observation of small living organisms under a microscope at an early age led him to study medicine. Edinger had many discoveries to his credit. He was the first to describe the ventral and dorsal spinocerebellar tracts, to distinguish between paleo‐encephalon and neo‐encephalon, and between paleo‐cerebellum and neo‐cerebellum. He coined the terms “gnosis” and “praxis,” which were later adopted in psychological descriptions of agnosia and apraxia. He identified the Edinger‐Westphal nucleus in 1885 and was the first to describe the syndrome of thalamic pain. Edinger worked with renowned clinicians and published a large number of papers. He founded the Neurological Institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, which is the oldest neurological Institute in Germany. Edinger was a rare combination of a profound scientist, a brilliant teacher, a fine artist, and a noted hypnotist. While at the height of his career, he underwent a surgery and died a few hours later. It was his last will that his brain should be dissected in his own institute. It showed extraordinarily well‐developed occipital lobes as well as other unusual features. Clin. Anat. 25:155–157, 2012. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Urbanization, Bourgeois Culture, and the Institutionalization of the Frankfurt Neurological Institute by Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918)

“…Taking this historiographical perspective as the theoretical vantage point of this article, one may realize how Edinger arrived at his many pioneering contributions to contemporary neuroscientific work, which have already been noted and identified in the existing scholarship (e.g., Stahnisch 2003, pp. 9-13;Prithishkhumar 2012;Patton 2015). Now, in the 110th year of the incorporation of Edinger's Institute into the bourgeois University of Frankfurt, some more genuine perspectives on the organizational and political contributions to contemporary neuroanatomy can be worked out (see also in: Eling 2018) and put in the social and cultural context of their time (e.g., Emisch 1992, pp.…”