Albert Neisser

NEISSER, Albert (Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser, 1855–1916), a well-known German dermatovenereologist. After graduating from the medical faculty in 1877, he remained as an assistant, first at the Breslau clinic, and then until 1882 at the Leipzig clinic. To this assistant period belong the works of Neisser that made his name known to the entire medical world. In 1879, Neisser discovered the causative agent of gonorrhea (gonococcus, Neisser's diplococcus) and thereby laid the foundation for the study of gonorrhea not only as a local, but also as a general disease. In the same year, while working in Spain on leprosy, Neisser proved the acid-fastness of Hansen's bacillus and, by proposing accessible methods for its staining, laid the foundation for the anatomical-biological study of leprosy. From 1882, Neisser was a professor of the Department of Skin and Venereal Diseases in Breslau; the clinic he created subsequently had a great influence on the development of German dermatology. In 1904–05 and in 1907, Neisser organized two scientific research expeditions to Batavia, where he extensively set up the experimental study of syphilis in monkeys. The work of the Batavia expedition, which collected a huge amount of experimental material, found further practical reflection in the works of Wassermann, in collaboration with Neisser and Bruck, on the serology of syphilis (see Wassermann reaction). Neisser warmly welcomed the salvarsan therapy for syphilis proposed by Ehrlich and was one of the first to point out the necessity of its combined application. Being a bright representative of "etiological" thinking in medicine, Neisser attempted to use Koch's tuberculins for the treatment of lupus. Neisser widely popularized personal and public prophylaxis of venereal diseases and in 1902 founded the German Society for the Fight Against Venereal Diseases, becoming its first chairman. To Neisser's pen belongs an extensive series of works on clinical and public venereology and dermatology; among them the most important, published as separate editions: "Uber die Bedeutung der Lupuskrankheit und die Notwendigkeit ihrer Bekampfung" (Leipzig, 1908); "Bericht uber die wahrend der Jahre 1905–1909 in Batavia und Breslau ausgefuhrten Arbeiten zur Erforschung der Syphilis" (Berlin, 1911); "Syphilis und Salvarsan" (Berlin, 1913); "Die Geschlechtskrankheiten und ihre Bekampfung" (Berlin, 1916). Neisser took a close part in the editing of the major specialized journal "Archiv fur Dermatologie und Syphilis" (Berlin).