- Erich Hoffmann
Erich Hoffmann (
April 25 ,1868 -May 8 1959 ) was a Germandermatologist who was a native of Witzmitz,Pomerania . He studied medicine at the Berlin Military Academy, and was later a professor at the Universities of Halle and Bonn.Hoffmann is remembered through his work done as an assistant to
zoologist Fritz Schaudinn (1871-1906) at theCharité Clinic inBerlin . In 1905 Schaudinn and Hoffmann discovered thebacterium that was responsible forsyphilis . It was a spiral-shapedspirochete called "Treponema pallidum " which was taken from a papula in thevulva of a patient withsecondary syphilis . The two doctors documented their findings in a treatise called "Vorläufiger Bericht über das Vorkommen von Spirochaeten in syphilitischen Krankheitsprodukten und bei Papillome".Hoffmann left Germany during the era of National Socialism, but returned to
Bonn after the war, and established a laboratory. In the late 1940s he published two books regarding his life in medicine, titled "Wollen und Schaffen" and "Ringen um Vollendung".References
* [http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0365-05962005000600017&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en Anais Brasileiros de Dermatologia, "The Discovery of "Treponema pallidum"]
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