Johann Friedrich August von Esmarch | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1823-01-09)9 January 1823 |
| Died | 23 February 1908(1908-02-23) (aged 85) |
| Alma mater | University of Kiel University of Göttingen |
| Known for | Esmarch bandage |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Surgery |
Johannes Friedrich August von Esmarch (9 January 1823 – 23 February 1908) was a Germansurgeon. He developed theEsmarch bandage and founded theDeutscher Samariter-Verein, the predecessor of theDeutscher Samariter-Bund.
Esmarch was born inTönning, Schleswig-Holstein. He studied atKiel andGöttingen, and in 1846 becameBernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck's assistant at the Kiel surgical hospital. He served in theSchleswig-Holstein War of 1848 as junior surgeon, and this directed his attention to the subject of militarysurgery. He was taken prisoner, but afterwards exchanged, and was then appointed as surgeon to afield hospital. During the truce of 1849 he qualified asPrivatdocent at Kiel, but on the fresh outbreak of war he returned to the troops and was promoted to the rank of senior surgeon.[1]
In 1854 Esmarch became director of the surgical clinic at Kiel, and in 1857 head of the general hospital and professor at theUniversity of Kiel. During theSchleswig-Holstein War of 1864, Esmarch rendered good service to the field hospitals ofFlensburg,Sundewitt and Kiel. In 1866 he was called toBerlin as member of the hospital commission, and also to take the superintendence of the surgical work in the hospitals there. When theFranco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, he was appointed surgeon-general to the army, and afterwards consulting surgeon at the great military hospital near Berlin.[1]
In 1872 Esmarch married PrincessCaroline Christiane Auguste Emilie Henriette Elisabeth ofSchleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1833–1917), aunt of EmpressAugusta Viktoria. In 1887 apatent of nobility was conferred on Esmarch. He died at Kiel.[1]
Esmarch was one of the greatest authorities on hospital management and military surgery. HisHandbuch der kriegschirurgischen Technik was written for a prize offered by the empress Augusta, on the occasion of the Vienna Exhibition of 1877, for the best handbook for the battlefield of surgical appliances and operations. This book iillustrated by diagrams showing the different methods of bandaging and dressing, as well as the surgical operations as they occur on the battlefield. Esmarch himself invented an apparatus, which bears his name, for keeping a limb nearly bloodless duringamputation.[1]
No part of Esmarch's work is more widely known than that which deals withFirst Aid, hisFirst Aid on the Battlefield andFirst Aid to the Injured being popular manuals on the subject. The latter is the substance of a course of lectures delivered by him in 1881 to aSamaritan School, the first of the kind in Germany, founded by Esmarch in 1881, in imitation of theSt John Ambulance classes which had been organized in England in 1878. These lectures were very generally adopted as a manual for first aid students, edition after edition having been called for, and they have been translated into numerous languages, the English version being the work of HRH Princess Christian.[1]
At the time, no ambulance course would be complete without a demonstration of theEsmarch bandage. It was a three-sided piece of linen or cotton, of which the base measures 120 cm and the sides 85 cm. It could be used folded or open, and applied in thirty-two different ways. It answered every purpose for temporary dressing and field-work, while its great recommendation was that the means for making it were always at hand.[1]
In 1857 Esmarch wrote an article together with the psychiatrist Peter Willers Jessen. They had discovered the connection betweensyphilis andgeneral paralysis of the insane.[2] Esmarch also observed a link between syphilis and cancer in 1877.[3]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Esmarch, Johannes Friedrich August von".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 771.
