Olshausen

OLSHAUSEN Robert (Robert v. Olshausen, 1835-1915), one of the greatest German gynecologists of the 19th century. He studied medicine in Kiel and Königsberg. After completing medical school, he intended to dedicate himself to the study of eye diseases, but at Martin's insistence, he became his assistant. After 2 years, he moved as an assistant to Halle and soon became the successor to the deceased Hohl (NoH). In Halle, O. quickly distinguished himself as a teacher, scientist, and gynecological surgeon, brilliantly performing new and then daring operations of uterine curettage and removal of ovarian tumors (ovariotomy); he adopted and persistently implemented the then new principles of Listerian antisepsis. In the literary field, O. attracted attention with his classic monograph on ovarian diseases, which was included in the famous surgery of Billroth and Pitha (Russian ed., St. Petersburg, 1879). O. remained in Halle for 25 years, repeatedly declining invitations from larger universities, and only in 1887 accepted the chair of the deceased Karl Schröder in Berlin. Here he remained until the maximum academic age, supporting and developing the brilliant work of his predecessor. His gynecological activity was marked by a series of technical improvements and new proposals (ventrofixation), coinciding with the general flourishing of this specialty. However, O. did not abandon obstetrics (the doctrine of the mechanism of childbirth), which among other things manifested itself in the five-time (1888-99) republication and revision of Karl Schröder's classic textbook, on which doctors from around the world at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were trained (Russian translations exist).