Hermann Oppenheim, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetHermann Oppenheim
German neurologist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Warburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
About Hermann Oppenheim
- Hermann Oppenheim (1 January 1858 – 5 May 1919) was one of the leading neurologists in Germany. He studied medicine at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Bonn.
- He started his career at the Charité-Hospital in Berlin as an assistant to Karl Westphal (1833–1890).
- In 1891 Oppenheim opened a successful private hospital in Berlin. In 1894, Oppenheim was the author of a textbook on nervous diseases titled Lehrbuch der Nervenkrankheiten für Ärzte und Studierende, a book that soon became a standard in his profession.
- It was published in several editions and languages, and is considered one of the best textbooks on neurology ever written.
- He also published significant works on tabes dorsalis, alcoholism, anterior poliomyelitis, syphilis, multiple sclerosis and traumatic neurosis.
- In the field of physiology, he published articles on metabolism of urea with the aid of Nathan Zuntz (1847–1920). In 1889 he published a treatise on traumatic neuroses that was harshly criticized by eminent physicians that included Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) and Max Nonne (1861–1959); the reason being due to Oppenheim's assertion that psychological trauma caused organic changes that perpetuated psychic neuroses. His expertise involving brain disease led directly to the first successful removal of a brain tumor, an operation that was performed by a physician named R.
- Köhler.
- With surgeon Fedor Krause (1857–1937), he reported the first successful removal of a pineal tumor. He coined the term "dystonia musculorum deformans" for a type of childhood torsion disease he described, a disorder that was later to become known as "Ziehen-Oppenheim syndrome" (named along with German psychiatrist Theodor Ziehen 1862–1950).
- Also, another name for amyotonia congenita is "Oppenheim's disease". His son Hans Oppenheim became an opera conductor and emigrated to Britain following the Nazi takeover.
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