Career
Bernhardt was a native of Potsdam. In 1867 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) and Ludwig Traube (1818-1878). Subsequently he became an assistant to Ernst Viktor von Leyden (1832-1910) at the university clinic at Königsberg, and afterwards worked at the Berlin-Charité under Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1833-1890).
Bernhardt published several treatises on neurological diseases and electrotherapy, and in 1885 became editor-in-chief of the Centralblatt für die Medizinischen Wissenschaften.
With Russian neuropathologist Vladimir Karlovich Roth (1848-1916), the eponymous "Bernhardt-Roth paraesthesia" is named. This condition is also referred to as meralgia paraesthetica, and is characterized by numbness or pain in the outer thigh that is caused by injury to the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve.
Associated eponym: Bernhardt"s formula: A formula used to calculate an adult"s ideal weight in kilograms. lieutenant is found by measuring a persons" height in centimeters, times his/her chest circumference in centimeters and dividing by 240.