Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld

Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld (May 2, 1842 - November 19, 1899) was a German pathologist who was a native of Kluvensieck bei Rendsburg. In 1867 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich (1815-1877) and Ernst Leberecht Wagner (1828-1888). In 1870 he became a prosector at the city hospital in Dresden, and in 1885 returned to Leipzig, where he succeeded Julius Cohnheim (1839-1884) as chair of pathological anatomy. One of his better known assistants was pathologist Christian Georg Schmorl (1861-1932).

Birch-Hirschfeld made important contributions in several facets of pathological medicine, and is particularly remembered for his work in bacteriology. In 1898 he described the unitary nature of nephroblastoma.
* Associated eponym:
* "Birch-Hirschfeld stain": A stain that was formerly used for demonstrating amyloid, and consisted of a mixture of Bismarck brown and crystal violet.

Selected writings

* "Lehrbuch der Pathologischen Anatomie" (Textbook of Pathological-Anatomy) Leipsig, 1877
* "Die Entstehung der Gelbsucht neugeborener Kinder"( The emergence of jaundice in newborn children); "Virchow's Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für klinische Medizin", Berlin, LXXXVII.
* "The Skrophulose", In: Hugo Wilhelm von Ziemssen's "Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie". Volume XIII; 2nd edition
* "Grundriss der Allgemeinen Pathologie" (Outline of General Pathology} Leipsig, 1892
* "Über die Krankheiten der Leber und Milz" (About the diseases of the liver and spleen). In: Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt (1833-1902): "Handbuch der Kinderkrankheiten". Volume IV, Tübingen, H. Laupp, 1877–1893).

References

* [http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/2108.html "Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld"] @ Who Named It