Background
Theodor M. Bilharz was born on March 23, 1825, in Sigmaringen, Baden-Wurttemberg, the son of Anton Bilharz, a counsellor of the exchequer, and Elisa Fehr.
Theodor Maximilian Bilharz
University of Tübingen, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, 72074 Tübingen, Germany
Theodor Bilharz studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, and in 1847 he won the medical faculty's prize competition for his dissertation on the blood of invertebrates. In 1850 he graduated from Tübingen with his Doctor of Medicine degree.
University of Tübingen, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, 72074 Tübingen, Germany
Theodor Bilharz studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, and in 1847 he won the medical faculty's prize competition for his dissertation on the blood of invertebrates. In 1850 he graduated from Tübingen with his Doctor of Medicine degree.
pathologist physician scientist teacher
Theodor M. Bilharz was born on March 23, 1825, in Sigmaringen, Baden-Wurttemberg, the son of Anton Bilharz, a counsellor of the exchequer, and Elisa Fehr.
Bilharz attended the secondary school in Sigmaringen and took an early interest in nature, and particularly entomology. After having completed the Fürstlich Sigmaringer Gymnasium with good marks he studied philosophy for two years at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität (now University of Freiburg) in Freiburg im Breisgau, where his disciplines were mathematics, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, geology, archaeology, antique art, history, ethics and psychology.
One of his teachers at Freiburg was Friedrich Arnold, who influenced Bilharz to become passionately interested in medical research, particularly that of comparative anatomy. From 1845 Bilharz studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, still under Friedrich Arnold, who had accepted the chair of anatomy and physiology at Tübingen that year. Here, in 1847, he submitted a prize-winning paper on microscopic investigations on the blood of invertebrates. Another teacher who influenced Bilharz at Tübingen was Carl Theodor von Siebold. In 1849 he passed the state examination in Sigmaringen and the following year he received his doctorate at Tübingen.
In 1850, aged 26, Bilharz accompanied Wilhelm Griesinger to Egypt on an Expedition arranged by the Duke of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. It was the new ruler of Egypt, Abbas I, who engaged Griesinger and named him director of the Egyptian Department of Hygiene. Griesinger made it a condition that his 25 years old assistant come with him. During the previous decades, Egyptian health care had been dominated by the French, who had been present in science and medicine since the time of Napoleon. Abbas' sympathies, however, went more to Germans and Austrians.
In Cairo, Griesinger and Bilharz they came to the medical school near Kasr el Aïn. This school had been established by the French physician Antoine Bartholomew Clot Bey, who taught according to modern European methods. This included obligatory autopsies - carried out despite heavy religious resistance.
During this time, Bilharz discovered the cestode worm Hymenolepis nana living in the small intestine of an Egyptian male. Also, in 1851, during an autopsy, he discovered the trematode worm that is the cause of urinary schistosomiasis, initially naming it Distomum haematobium. It was subsequently noted that only one of the suckers contained an oral cavity, and in 1856 Heinrich Meckel von Hemsbach proposed that the organism be renamed Bilharzia haematobium. In 1858 Weinland proposed the name Schistosoma after the male worms' morphology, and the name Schistosoma haematobium was officially adopted by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.
In Cairo, Bilharz worked as an assistant physician in various hospitals. After Griesinger's return to Germany in 1852, he was appointed physician in chief of the department of internal medicine at the medical school near Kasr el Aïn, and in 1855 took over the chair of clinical medicine at the Kasr el Aïn in Cairo. In 1856 he became professor of descriptive anatomy at the medical school, and he held this tenure until his death in 1862. Later Bilharz was also engaged as a forensic anatomist at the Kasr el Aïn. In 1856 he was appointed "Bimbaschi" - major.
In 1862 Bilharz accompanied the German explorer Duke Ernst von Coburg-Gotha to Massava in Ethiopia as life physician to the Duchess. During the journey, Bilharz treated the duchess for typhoid fever. The Duchess returned home in good health, but Bilharz died on the evening of May 9, in Cairo. Theodor Bilharz was 37 years old.
Theodor Maximilian Bilharz is remembered as a physician and pathologist, who played a big role by discovering the Schistosomiasis worm while in Europe at that time the focus of research was on the life history of tapeworms. He also discovered Hymenolepis nana in the human intestine.
In Cairo, the Bilharz Research Institute is named for him, and upon the hundredth anniversary of his death, the Egyptian postal issued a stamp with his portrait. In Sigmaringen a school, a street and a pharmacy are named for him.
A lunar impact crater was also named in his honor.
