Ernst von Bergmann

Ernst von Bergmann (16 December 1836 –25 March 1907) was a Baltic German surgeon.

Born in Riga, Livonia, in 1860 he earned his doctorate at the University of Dorpat, and later returned to Dorpat in 1871, where he was a professor of surgery until 1878. After spending a few years as a professor at Würzburg, he moved to the University of Berlin in 1882, where he remained for the remainder of his career. Two of his assistants in Berlin were Curt Schimmelbusch (1860-1895) and Friedrich Gustav von Bramann (1854-1913). His son, Gustav von Bergmann (1878-1955) was a noted doctor of internal medicine.

Bergmann was the first physician to introduce heat sterilisation of surgical instruments, thus marking the beginning of aseptic surgery. He was a surgeon in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), where he gained experience treating cranial trauma and neurological disorders. Bergmann published several surgical works, including a classic treatise on cranial surgery titled "Die Chirurgische Behandlung der Hirnkrankheiten".

With Friedrich von Bramann and English physician Morrell Mackenzie (1837-1892), he attended to Frederick III (1831-1888), when the emperor was dying of laryngeal cancer. Bergmann died in Wiesbaden. Today, the "Ernst von Bergmann Clinical Center" in Potsdam is named in his honor.

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