PETTENKOFER, MAX JOSEF VON

(b. Lichten heim [near Neuburg], Germany, 3 December 1818; d. Munich, Germany, 10 February 1901)

chemistry, hygiene, epidemiology.

Although Pettenkofer initiated advances in many fields of science, his fame rests chiefly upon his pioneering accomplishments in experimental hygiene, a discipline that he founded. He was the fifth of eight children born in a solitary, converted custom house at a former border crossing in the Danubian marshes of lower Bavaria. His father, Johann Baptist Pettenkofer, the youngest of four sons of a customs official who had bought the property, farmed the peat bog unsuccessfully. His industrious mother, nineteen years her husband’s junior, was of Oberpfalz peasant stock.

A parental uncle, the pharmacist Franz Xaver Pettenkofer, became court apothecary to Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1823. As his marriage was childless, he helped to educate four of his marriage was childless, he helped to educate four of his brother’s children, who went successively to Munich to live in their uncle’s official apartment in the royal residence; Max arrived there in 1827. While yearning for country-life simplicities, he gradually overcame the limits of his early parish schooling, made prizewinning progress through Latin school, and in 1837 matriculated with distinction from the humanistic Gymnasium. He entered the University of Munich with a predilection for philogy, but accepted his uncle’s insistence upon two years in philosophy and natural sciences, followed by apprenticeship at the court pharmacy.

On completing the prescribed university courses, of which he liked chemistry most, Pettenkofer worked diligently under tutelage, and in one year (instead of the usual three) was appointed assistant. But his uncle’s strict regimen and demanding nature provoked the high-spirited youth to abandon his post and leave Munich. Under the pseudonym “Tenkof” he took minor parts at the Augsburg theater. Neither uncomplimentary reviews nor emissaries from the scandalized apothecary altered his course. He became captivated, however, by Helene Pettenkofer, the daughter of another uncle, Josef Pettenkofer, and she consented to marry Max, but only if he resumed steady ways. Accordingly, he left the stage, became engaged to Helene, and received a prodigal’s welcome from his Munich uncle, who nevertheless forbade employment in the court pharmacy, advising that the medical profession was more suited to a former actor. In 1841 he returned to university studies and by June 1843 passed with honors the state qualifying examinations for both pharmacist and physician. His doctoral dissertation, “Ueber Mikania Guaco,” concerned a plant of the Eupatorium genus, native to Mexico and Colombia, the sap of whcih reputedly had medicinal value in snakebite, rabies, and cholera. Self-experiments with a resin chemically extracted from the leaves induced vomiting, quickened pulse, and profuse sweating.

Pettenkofer was unwilling to practice either profesion. While still and undergraduate, he had improved the sensitivity and specificity of Marsh’s test for arsenic. The mineralogist Johann von Fuchs now advised additional training in medical chemistry, foreseeing a chair in this specialty at Munich. With Fuchs’s influence Pettenkofer secured a bursary to attend the 1843-1844 winter semester at the University of Wurzburg under Josef Scherer, a former pupil of Justus Liebig. There he detected large amounts of hippuric acid in the urine of a child whose diet consisted of only bread and apples–a notable example of the influence of diet upon urinary composition-and he developed the specific color reaction for bile, a test which still carries his name. Ge spent the summer at the University of Giessen, where he became an enthusiastic disciple of Liebig, who was then at the zenith of his powers and fame. Assigned to investigate the chemistry of meat, Pettenkofer discovered in human urine a new amino acid, creatinine. But a lack of funds ended this brief interlude.

At Munich, ministerial indifference dashed his hopes for a university post in medical chemistry. Unemployed and frustrated, he turned to poetry, composing romantic poems (published over forty years later as Chemische Sonette) glorifying chemistry and its adepts, from Roger Bacon to Liebig. In 1845 an appointment as assistant at the Royal Mint sufficiently relieved his financial problems, and he at last married his cousin Helene. Pettenkofer’s duties, officail and unofficial, agreeably challenged his resourcefulness. The costs of Bavarian currency conversion were minimized by retrieving precious metals from the old silver thalers. The gold that was separated during refining contained about 3 percent silver, which was tenaciously combined with small amounts of platinum. Pettenkofer devised methods for separating the gold from the silver and recovering the platinum. By a slow-cooling process in the mint ovens he reproduced the beautiful bloodred ( “haematinon”) coloration of a specimen of porporino antico that was possessed by the king. He also reported the presence of sulfocyanic acid in human saliva. In 1846 he was elected an extraordinary member of the Bavarian Academy of Science. In the following year a ministerial change reopened the possibility of a chair in medical chemistry at Munich. On Fuchs’s urging, Pettenkofer became a candidate. With royal support he was appointed extraordinary professor in Novemeber 1847, four months before the king abdicated.

His lecture course was developed slowly, with frequent changes of title and content. Pathologic chemistry was lightly treated, but the applications of chemistry to nutrition, public health, sanitation, and forensic medicine were emphasized. Another component, at first unformulated, concerned the role of chemistry in analyzing man’s personal environment. His first lectures were given in 1853 under the tiltle “Dietetic Physical-Chemistry,” and not until 1865, when a new chair of hygiene was created for him, did he adopt the title “Lectures on Hygiene.” In 1850 a remarkable address to the Royal Academy of Sciences, “Ueber die regelmassigen Abstande der Aequivalentzahlen der sogenannten einfachen Radicale,” revealed his reflective mastery of chemical principles and presaged the periodic law of the elements. As verification of the alleged mathematical relationships between certain elements depended upon accurate atomic weights, Pettenkofer sought vainly for modest support from the Academy to make the necessary precise determinations. His classic report, published in an obscure journal, was reprinted in Liebig’s Annalen der Chamie und Pharmacie (1858) when his priority was threatened. In 1899 the German Chemical Society awarded him a gold medal commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the historic address.

Pettenkofer’s versatility in solving practical problems was nearly inexhaustible. He observed that German hydraulic lime equaled English Portland cement in hardening properties if the calcining temperature of the marl was reduced. He also discovered means of imprving the illuminating power of wood gas, so that (until coal became cheaper) several German cities and the Munich railway station were its thereby. Such accomplishments enhanced his widespread reputation for chemical inventiveness and excited new demands. In the early 1860’s his reports on the restoration of oil paintings in the Alte Pinakothek emphasized proper heating of art galleries to prevent the dampness that opacified many varnishes. He was also recognized professionally, being nominated to the Chief Medical Commission (Obermedizinalausschuss) in 1849. Upon his uncle’s death (1850), he was appointed part-time director of the royal pharmacy, with tenure of the apartment in whcih his earlier years were spent. His brother Michael became court apothecary and managed the operating details. Under their administration, a model profitable institution developed.

When the new king, Maximilian II, informed the Commission about the uncomfortable dryness and possible health hazards from heating the palace by circulated hot air instead of stoves, Pettenkofer was delegated to resolve the problem. His investigations disclosed that the dryness was caused by the faster-flowing heated air desiccating the room walls. This project showed how such vague expressions as “salubrity of dwellings” could be substantiated by explicit data; the project was also hi sstarting point for the new science of experimental hygiene. He realized that determinations of the physical properties of building materials were extensible to adjacent soil, personal clothing, and more remote factors concerning human health.

In 1852 he helped the king arrange Liebig’s appointment to the chair of chemistry at Munich. Although Pettenkofer had become ordinary professor of medical chemistry (1852), he never competed with the acknowledged master, but instead attained preeminence in the discipline created by himself. At Pettenkofer’s request, Liebig permitted his name to be attached to the well-known meat extract that Pettenkofer was manufacturing in the court pharmacy.

In 1857 better accommodation became available in the new Physiological Institute. Pettenkofer investigated air exchange in Munich hospitals and studied artificial ventilation in Paris. A simplified method of carbon dioxide assay was used to evolve standards of atmospheric purity for occupied rooms. He cast new light on air permeation through room walls, on the composition of ground air and its penetrability into dwellings, and on the vitiation of air by heating and lighting arrangements. Other studies were facilitated after 1860 by an airtight metallic respiratory apparatus, invented by himself and paid for by the king, who patronized science as his father had patronized the arts. This unique structure comfortably housed a human subject or large experimental animal for a given period while the gaseous exchange and all bodily gains or losses were measured exactly. Thus, in collaboration with Carl Voit, one of his earliest pupils, Pettenkofer established many basic nutritional facts, such as the dietetic requirements of normal people at rest and in various activites, the vital necessity of adequate protein intake, the protein-sparing properties of carbohydrate and fat during starvation, and the need of the diabetic for extra protein and fat to replace unused carbohydrate.

These advances captured international attention. Voit became director of the Physiological Institute in 1863. Two years later Pettenkofer was made ordinary professor of hygiene and elected university rector at Munich. During an audience with the young King Ludwig II, Pettenkofer promoted hygiene so effectively that chairs were created at the universities of Würzburg and Erlangen, and the subject was made compulsory in state medical examinations. The new discipline had taken firm root. In 1865, with Voit and two associates, Pettenkofer founded and for eighteen years coedited the Zeitschrift für Biologie, which published many of his reports. The collaborative studies on nutrition continued until Pettenkofer moved into his own institute. His special interest in the hygienic importance of air focused on its relationship to clothing and particularly to soil. He discussed the functions of clothing in the first volume of the Zeitschrift; and in 1872, in three popular lectures, he dealt with air in relation to clothing, dwelling, and soil.

Pettenkofer believed that soil had fundamental sanitary relationships, for “an impurity cleaves longest and most tenaciously to the soil, whcih suffers no change of place, like air and water.” An unexpected, late offshoot of his work on soil aeration was his observation of coal gas poisoning that resulted from seepage into houses from leaking mains (1883). But his initial and continuing preoccupation with this field stemmed mainly from his determination to explain recurrent cholera epidemics—the grimmest challenge to hygiene in the nineteenth century. His introduction to cholera came as member of a comminssion which had been appointed to review scientifically the 1854 epidemic in Bavaria. He studied ten outbraks, including one in detail in Munich, where he and his young daughter contracted the disease and their cook died of it. As cholera was neither purely contagious (like smallpox) nor purely miasmatic (like malaria), Pettenkofer concluded that it must be contagiomiasmatic. He developed the hypothesis that choleraic excreta embodied a contagious factor, the dissemination of which required soils of a particular constitution: moist, porous, and polluted. Penetrating into such terrain, “the cholera germ-bearing excrements…modify the existing process of decay and decomposition,” so that, besides normal putrefactive gases, “a specific Cholera-Miasma is developed, which is then spread along with other exhalations into the houses” (1855). From his survey in Munich, Pettenkofer concluded that drinking water did not cause the outbreak. This conclusion was then generalized and extended to typhoid fever (highly endemic in Munich). Thus his epidemiologic doctrines were directly opposed to those of John Snow and William Budd in England.

He then investigated the varied regional incidence of cholera in Bavaria. Its recurrence along certain river valleys was attributed to their being areas of natural soil drainage rather than routes of travel; and he deduced that the decisive factor in the genesis of cholera was the moisture content of the local soil, which was indicated by the groundwater level. When the water table fell, as in summer, a larger soil volume became available for production of the toxic miasma. This hypothesis of the mode of spread of cholera became an idée fixe. Pettenkofer expounded his theory in the Zeitschrift, and his pupils L. Buhl and L.Seidel each discussed the etiology of typhoid fever from similar theoretic standpoints (1865). Their position was a compromise between the “contagionist” view of Snow and Budd, which stated that the intestines of cholera and typhoid patients were the primary origin of the specific infective agents, and the extreme “localist” concept developed by James Cuningham and his Anglo-Indian associates in Calcutta, which held that chorlea epidemics arose because of properties of the localities concerned. Pettenkofer’s localist leanings did not diminish when disinfection of excreta failed to halt the 1866 cholera outbreak in Germany. Moreover, his travels in 1868 revealed that the comparative immunity of Lyons to cholera, and the recent outbreaks in Malta and Gibraltar,were all explicable by the nature of their underlying terrain. In an extensive review, Boden und Graudwasser in ihren Beziehungen zu Cholera und Typhus (1869), he proposed that an “X” factor, dependent on human intercourse, and a “y” factor, derived from soil, were essential for production of the true cholera poison “z.” The reaction of the germ and the soil factor might occur in the soil itself, in the air of the dwelling, or perhaps in the human body. But the germ alone could no more cause cholera than swallowing yeast cells could produce intoxication.

Despite denials that cholera or typhoid might be waterborne, Pettenkofer’s hygienic philosophy required that the water supply of a city be free from impurities. Between 1867 and 1883 he initiated measures whereby the drinking water supply of Munich became one of the finest in Europe. Further, since cholera tends to rage where the greatest filth prevails, he set about providing the city with good drainage and sewerage. After the 1854 epidemic, the possibility was mooted of replacing the unsanitary night eartage of excreta with float-canalization (Schwemmkanalisation), in which all excreta and household wastes were piped into the natural streamlets and canals traversing Munich and thence into the swift-flowing Isar River. This system, initiated in 1858, publicly backed in 1870, and completed in 1892, testified to Pettenkofer’s vision, persistence, scientific authority, and persuasiveness.

Munich acknowledged these contributions to its cleanliness by granting him honorary citizenship in 1872. Two public lectures entitled “Ueber den Werth der Gesundheit f¨r eine Stadt” (1873) illustrated well his talent for inspiring further hygienic advances. These advances were evident from the essay “Munich a Healthy Town” (munich 1889) and from the changes reported to the Epidemiological Society of London by C. Childs, an English physician, in “The History of Typhoid Fever in Munich”(1898).

A flattering call to Vienna in 1872 was rejected by Pettenkofer after the German government assured him that a hygienic institute would be erected for him in Munich. In 1876 he also refused chancellor Bismarck’s invitation to direct the new Reichsgesundheitsamt (Imperial Health Office). He was honorary president of the second International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held in 1878 in Paris. In 1879 the first Institute of Hygiene, with abundant space and equipment for teaching and research, was formally opened under his direction. In 1882, with H. W. von Ziemssen’s collaboration a Handbuch der Hygiene appeared; and with two colleagues Pettenkofer founded an coedited the Archiv f¨r Hygiene in 1883. In that year he was granted hereditary nobility.

When Koch first announced his isolation of the “comma bacillus” from cholera cases (1883), Pettenkofer readily accepted this vibrio as his “x” factor, but refused to modify his views on the paramountcy of the telluric “y” factor. Perhaps his attitude hardened because he was not invited to the first cholera conference in Berlin in 1884, organized by the Reichsgesundheitsamt, of which he was an extraordinary member. Koch visited him at Munich later that year, but there was no rapprochement. Pettenkofer attended the second cholera conference (1885), but Koch seemed unaware or disdainful of Pettenkofer’s thirty years of careful epidemiologic enquiries and of his major role at earlier cholera conferences in Weimar (1867), Berlin (1873), and Vienna (1874). Koch and Carl Flugge now founded and coedited the Zeitschrift f¨r Hygiene (1885), while Pettenkofer reiterated and amplified his doctrines in the Archiv f¨r Hygiene (1886-1887). The two schools of inflexible proponents and loyal adherents polarized their irreconcilable opinions in Munich and Berlin. In 1892, after a classic waterborne epidemic killed some 8,000 inhabitants of Hamburg within three months, the seventy-four-year-old Pettenkofer defiantly drank a cubic centimeter of culture of a recently isolated Vibrio cholerae. His colleague R. Emmerich subsequently repeated the experiment. They both developed diarrhea and excreted cholera vibrios for several days. These were proclaimed negative reactions and hence dramatic vindications of Pettenkofer’s doctrine. The possibilities of immunity from previous exposure to the infecting agent or of the low virulence of the culture, however, were not raised. But the tide of evidence and opinion was not reversed, and little more was heard (outside the Munich school) of the localist or groundwater theory.

Honors and weariness now descended upon the intrepid hygienist. His seventieth birthday celebrations were highlighted by an address signed by over 100 artists, and by Munich and Leipzig jointly creating a Pettenkofer Foundation to provide prizes for scientific accomplishments in hygiene. For his doctoral jubilee in 1893, a Festschrift and a volume of Archiv f¨r Hygiene were dedicated to him; Munich presented its golden Citizen’s Medal, and many other German and foreign honors were bestowed. In 1896 he was granted the title Excellenz, and in 1897 received the Harben Medal from the Royal Institute of Public Health in England as “founder of scientific hygiene,” Honorary doctorates from universities and honorary memberships in foreign medical and hygienic associations were very numerous. After his last public address, “Ueber Selbstreinigung der Flusse” (1891), he continued academic lectures for another three years. In 1894 he became professor emeritus, and within the next two years resigned his editorial duties and retired from the court pharmacy. In 1899 he terminated a decade as president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Pettenkofer retained his apartment in the royal residence for winter living, but was happiest in his country home at Seeshaupt on the Starnberger See. He restored the land, pruned trees, planted crops, and rowed on the lake. His only contacts with hygiene were through occasional visitors and lively correspondence with former students and disciples, many of whom now held chairs of hygiene in Germany and other countries. Although physically strong and mentally alert, he complained of tiredness, loss of memory, and inability to concentrate. His wife had died in 1890; and of their five children, two sons and a daughter had predeceased her. Pettenkofer especially mourned the loss of his gifted, eldest son, a medical student, who died from tuberculosis in 1869. Despite the care and concern of surviving relatives, he feared for his reason and threatened suicide. At the end of January 1901, a septic throat caused him much pain and insomnia, aggravating his depression. He bought a revolver and one night, two hours after being put to bed by his daughter-in-law, shot himself in the head. He was buried in South Munich cemetary. A seated statue of him was erected in a main public square. In 1944 the Hygienic Institute was destroyed by bombs and fire, but a new “Max v. Pettenkofer-Institut f¨r Hygiene und Medizinische Microbiologie” was completed on a neighboring site in 1961. An adjacent street still bears his name.

Pettenkofer was genial and sociable, carrying his culture and honors lightly, yet fully aware of the significance of his theories. A leonine countenance, self-confident bearing, and skillful delivery helped to make his lectures unforgettable. He worked prodigiously, rising early and often retiring late. His character was truly benevolent and without pettiness or spite, but he could be scornful of pretentiousness, angry at injustice, and stubborn in self-defense. His disciples revered him as father-figure and wise visionary. As an investigator the mark of genius appeared in the discrimination with which he selected mundane phenomean for delicate observation, and in the unexcelled virtuosity applied to determining their cause. Although his approach was highly original, he firmly believed in the practical aims of scientific hygiene, and all his research and exhortative efforts were directed toward promoting public health in its broadest sense. Indirectly, by elevating hygiene to an accepted discipline in medical training, he stimulated a new social outlook that encouraged the physician to provide not only relief from disease, but counsel and leadership toward healthful living.

A lenient view may be taken of Pettenkofer’s misconceptions about cholera and enteric infections. Although often biased in the selection of data supporting his contentions, the sincerity of his motives was never impugned. His deeply rooted obsession with soil as the major source of certain ailments yielded great benefits to Munich when its soil was cleansed by the introduction of effective drainage and sewerage. If the hubristic tendencies of some early bacteriologists bacteriologists were tempered by his skepticism, he was not antagonistic to their emerging science. At the 1885 conference, he magnanimously termed Koch’s discovery “a great enrichment of our pathologic knowledge about cholera.” His attitude might have been less obdurate against a more tactful adversary. After all, Koch was his junior by a quarter-century, and likewise even Pasteur by four years.

In honor of his eighty-first birthday, the citizens of Munich presented another gold medal “as a sign of unlimited veneration gratitude and love,” to the High Priest of Hygiene… the remover of pernicious diseases from the home soil.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Petrtenkofer wrote over 20 monographs and more than 200 separate articles in german ascienctific and medical journals between 1842 and 1898. There is no collected ed. E. E. Hume’s biograhpical review (see below) contains a bibliography pf 227 intems, which is fairly complete but sprinkled with inaccuracies.

Among Pettenkofer reports on hygienic topics availble in English are “Ueber den Respirations- und Perespirations- Apparat im physiologischen Institute zu Muclhen in Erdmanann’s Journal für praktische chemie 82 (1861) 40-50, trans. by A. Ten Brook as “Description of Apparatus for Testing the Results of Perspiration and Respiration in the Physiological Institute of Munich,” in Smithsonian report for 1864 (Washington, 1865), pp. 235-239; Beziejhungent der Luft zu Kleidung Wohnung, und Boden (Brunswick, 1872), 3 lectures, trans. by A. Hess as The relations of the Air to the Clothes we wear, the House We Live in, and the Soil We Dwell on (London, 1873); Ueber den Werthder Gesundfheit fur eine Stadt (Brunswick, 1873); 2 lectures, trans. by H. E. Sigerist as The Value of Health to a City (Baltimore, 1941), repr. from Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 10 (1941), 473–503, 593–613; and “Der Boden undsein Zusammendang mit der Gesundheit des Menschen,” in Deutsche Rundschau, 29 (1881), 217–234, trans. as “Santiary Relations of the Soil,” in Popular Science Monthly, 20 (1882),332-340 ; and “Munich a Healthy Town” (Munich, 1889), written with H. W. von Ziemssen.

English trans. or expression of pettenkofer’s views on cholera include “Observations Dr. Buchanan’s Lecture on Professor von Pettenvations on Dr. Buchanan’s Lecture on Professor von Pettenkofer’s Theory of the Propagation of Cholera and Enteric Fever,” in Medical Times and Gazette, 1 (1870), 629–632, 661–663, 687–689; “On the Recent Outbreak of Cholera in. Munich,” ibid., 1 (1874), 582–583; “On the Probability of an Invasion of Cholera in Europe,” in Sanitary Record, n.s. 5 (1883–1884), 47–51; “Professor Max von Pettenkofer on Cholera Afloat,” in Lancet (1884), 2 338–340; and “Cholera,” ibid., 769–771, 816–819, 861–864, 904–905, 992–994, 1042–1043, 1086–1088. His contributions to the 1874 Conference Sanitaire Internationale in Vienna were freely translated by T. W. Hime as Cholera: how to Prevent and Resist It (London, 1875; 2nd ed. 1883).

Other such works are Kùnftige Prophylaxis gegen Cholera… (Munich, 1875), with trans. and abstr. by A. Rabaglioti as “Artificial Prophylaxis Against Cholera,” in Sanitary Record, 3 (1875), 35–39; “Die Choleraepidemie in der koniglichen bayerischen Gefangenenanstalt Laufen an der Salzach,” in Bericht der Choleracommission f¨r das Deutsche Reich (Berlin, 1875), with trans. as Outbreak of Cholera Among Convicts … (London, 1876); “Die Cholera in Syrien und die Choleraprophylaxe in Europa,” in Zeitschrift f¨r Biologie, 12 (1876), 102–128, with trans. as “The Cholera in Syria and the Prophylaxis of Cholera in Europe,” in Practitioner, 16 (1876), 401–415; “Neum atiologische und prophylaktische Satze aus den amtlichen Berichten uber die Choleraepidemien in Ostindien und Nordamerica,” in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift f¨r offentliche Gesundheitspflege, 9 (1877), 177–224, with trans. as “Nine Propositons Bearing on the Aetiology and Prophylaxis of Cholera, Deduced From the Official Reports of the Cholera-Epidemic in East India and North America,” in Practitioner, 19 (1877), 135–160, 204–240; Zun gegenwartigen Stand der Cholerafrage (Munich, 1887), repr. from Archive f¨r Hygiene, 4 (1886), 249–354, 397–546; 5 (1886), 353–445; 6 (1887), 1–81, with abstr. and trans by H. Koplik as “The Present Aspect of the Cholera Question,” in Lancet (1886), 2 29–30, 89–91; and “Ueber Cholera mit Ber¨cksicthtigung der jungsten Choleraepidemie in Hamburg,” in M¨nchener medizinische Wochenschrift, 39 (1892), 807–817, discussion 826–828, with trans. and abstr. as “On Cholera, With Reference to the Recent Epidemic at Hamburg,” in Lancet (1892), 2 1182–1185.

His monographs or booklets include Ueber Chemie in ihrem Verhaltnisse zur Physiologie und Pathologie (Munich, 1848); Ueber Oelfarbe und Conservirung der Gemalde durch das Regenerations-Verfahren (Brunswick, 1850); Untersuchungen und Beobachtungen über die Verbreitungsart der Cholera … (Munich, 1855); Ueber den Luftwechsel in Wohngebäuden (Munich, 1858); Ueber die Verlegung der Gottesäcker in Basel (Basel, 1864); Die Cholera vom Jahre 1866 in Weimar (Weimar, 1867); Ueber die Urasachen und Gegenwirkung von Cholera-Epidemien in Eufurt (Erfurt, 1867) Boden und Grundwasser in ihren Beziehungen zu Cholera und Typhus (Munich, 1869), repr. from Zeitschrift für Biologie5 (1869), 171–310; Das Canal-oder Siel System in Munchen (Munich, 1869); Verbreitungsart der Cholera in Indien (Brunswick, 1871); Ueber die Aetiologie des Typhus(Munich, 1872); Ueber den gegenwartigen Stand der Cholera Frage … (Munich, 1873); Vortrage über Canalisation und Abfuhr (Munich, 1876); Populare Vortrage(Munich, 1877); Die Cholera(Breslau, 1884); Chemische Sonette(Munich, 1886);Der epidemiologische Theil des Berichtes über die Thatigkeit der zur Erforschung der Cholera im Jahre 1883 nach Aegypten und Indien entsandten deutschen Commission (Munich, 1888); and Die Verunreinigung der Isar durch das Schwemmsystem von Munchen (Munich, 1890). He was coeditor, with H.W. von Ziemssen, of Handbuch der Hygiene (Leipzig, 1882). He also wrote several obituraries and commemorative tributes, of which the most important is Dr. Justus Freiherrn von Liebig zum Gedachtnis (Munich, 1874).

Characteristic chemical reports are “Sichere und einfache Methode das Arsenik mittelst das Marsh’schen Apparates entwickelt von allen andern ahnlichen Erscheinungen augenfallig zu unterscheiden,” in Repertorium für die Pharmacie, 76 (1842), 289–307; “Nachtrag zur Arsenikprobe” ibid., 83 (1844), 328–336; “Ueber Mikania Guaco,” ibid.,86 (1844), 289–323, his inaugural diss. at the University of Munich (1844); “Ueber das Vorkommen einer grossen Menge Hippuursaaure im Menschenarne,” in Liebig’s Annual der chemie und Pharmacie52 (1844), 86–90;’ Notiz ü eine bneue Rection auf galle und Zucker,” ibid 90–96; “Vorlaugfige Notiz über einen neuen stickstoffhaltigen Körper im Harne,” ibid 97–100; “Ueber die Affinirung des Golds und über die grsse Verbreitung des Platins,” in Munchner gelehrte Anzeiger,24 (1847), 589–598; “Bemerkungen zu Hopfgartner ’s Analyse eines englischen und eines deutschen hydraulischen Kalkes,” in Dingler’s Polytechnisches Journal113 (1849), 357–371; “Ueber die regelmassigen Abstande der Aequivalentzahle der sogenannten einfachen Radicale;’ In Munchner gelehrte Anzeiger 30 (1850), 261–271; and;Ueber das Haematinon der Alten und über Aventuringles,” in Erdman’s Journal fur prakische Chemie 72 (1857), 50–53.

Works on various aspects of hygiene include, “Ueber den Unterschied zwischen Luftheizung und Ofenheizung in ihrer Einwirkung auf die Zusammebsetzung der Luft der beheizten Raume,” in Dingle’s Polytechnisches Journal119 (1851), 40–51, 282–290’ “Ueber die wichtigsten Grundsätze der Bereitung und Benützung des Holzleuchtgases,” in Erdmann’s Journal für poraktische chemie 71 (1857), 385–393; “Beriche über Ventilations Apparate,” in Abhandlungen der naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Commission bei der königlichen baireschen Akadamie 2, ( 1858), 19–68; “Besprechung allgemiener auf die Ventilation bezüglichetr Frangen,” ibid 69–126; “Ueber die Bestimmung der freien Kohlensaure im Trinkwasser,” in Erdmann’s Journal für praktische Chante 82 (1861), 32–40; “Ueber cine Methode die Kohlensaure in der atmoshparischen Luft zu bestimmen, ibid 85 (1862), 165–184; “Ueber die Respiration,” in Liebig’s Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie supp,. 2 (1862–1863), 1–52; “Untersuchungen über die Respiration,” lbid 52–70, written with C. Voit; “Ueber die Wall der Begrabnissplatze,” in Zeitschrift für Biologie, 1. (1865), 384–417; 9 (1873), 250–257; “Beleuchtung des konigliche Residenztheaters in Munchen mit gGads und mit elektirgliche Resdidentheathers in Munchen mit Gas und mit elektirschem Licit,” in Archi fur Hygine 1. (1883), 384–388; “Ueber Vergiftung mit Leuchtges,” in Freschrift des aerxtlichen Vergigitung Munchen (MUnich, 1883), pp. 68–74; “Der hygienische Unterricht and Unbetsitaten und techischen Hochschulen, opening speech, Vi International Congress for Hygiene and Demography (Vienna, 1887), “Ueber selbstrenigung der Flusse,” in Deutsche medizinisch Wochenchnft 17 (1891), 1277–1281.

Researches of hte physiology of nutrition include “Ueber die Producke der Respiration des Hundes bei Fleischnahrung und über die Gleichung der Einahmen und Ausgabe des Korpers dabel,” in Lie big’s Analen der Chentie und Pharmacie supp. 2 (1862–1863), 361–377; “UNtersuchngen tiber den StolTverbrauch des normalen Menseben,” in Zeitschrift für Biologie 2. (1866), 459–573; “Ueber den Stoffvertbrauvh bei der Zuckerharnruhr,” ibid 3. (1867), 380–44’ “Respiationsversuche am Hunde bei Hunger und ausschliesslicher Fettzufuhr,” ibid 5. (1969), 369–392; and “Ueber die Zersetzungsvorgenge im Theikorper bei Fütterung mit Fleisch und Felt,” ibid 9 (1873), 1–40, all written with C. Voit pettenkofer’s report on Liebig’s meat extract is “Ueber Nahrungsmittel im Allgemeinen und ¨ber den Werth des Fleischextracts als Bcstandtheil der menschlichen Nahrung insbesonders,” in Licbig’s Analen der Chemie und Pharmacie,167 (1873), 271–292.

His views on the etiology and epidemiology of cholera and typhoid fever are illustrated furher in “Die Bewegung des Grundwassers in München von Marz 1856 bis Marz 1862,” in Sitzungsbcrichte der konilichen baierschen Akademie der Wissebchaften zu münchen 1. (1862), 272–290’ “Ueber die Verbreitungsart der Cholera,” in Zeitschrift f¨r Biologic , 1 (1865) den gegenwärtigan Stand des Grungwassers in München,"ibid 375–377; “Die schsische Choleraepidemie des Jares 1865,” ibid 2 (1866), 78–144; “Ueber die Schwankungen der Typhussterblickeit in München von 1850 bis 1867,” ibid 4 (1868), 1–39; “die Immunitatvon Lyon gagen Cholera uns des Vorkommen der Cholera auf SeeschilTen,” ibid 400–490; “prof. Dr Hallier über dern Einflues des Trinkwassers auf dem Darmtyphsu in Münchenibid 512–530; “Die Chloaepidemie des jahres 1865 in Gibraltar,” ibid 6 (1870), 95–119; “Die Chloerapiedemien auf Malta und Gozo,” ibid 143–203; “Typhus und Cholera und Grundwasser in AZurich,” ibid 7 (1871), 86–103; aned “Ueber Cholera auf Unterund den Zweck der Quartanen ibid 8. (1872), 1–70.

Additional writings include “Auszug aus den Untersuch ungen von Dr. Douglas Cunnigham in Ostindien, ¨ber die Verbrietungsart der Cholera,” ibid 251–293; “Ist das Trinkwasser Qulle von Typhusepidemien?” ibid 10 (1874) 439–526; “Aetiologie des Abdominal Typhus,” in Archic für djfentliche Gesunsheispflege 9. (1884), 92–100; “Ueber Desinfection der ostindischen post als Schutzmittle gegen Einschleppuing der Cholera in Europa,” in Archv für Hygiene 2. (1884), 35–45; “Die Cholera in Indian,” ibid 129–146; “rudof virchow’s Choieratheorie,” in Berliner klinishe Wochenschrifi 21 (1884), 488–490, with Vircow’s reply ibis 3 (1885), 147–182; “m. Kiirchner, Ueber Cholera mit Berucksictigung der jungesten Cholerawpidemie in Hamburg,” in Centralblatt f¨r Backteriologie 12, (1892), 3898–904, in response to Kirchner’s review ibid 828–836; “Ueber die Cholera von 1892 in Hambung und uber Scghutzmnaassreglen,” in Archiw fur Hygiene 18 (1893), 94–132; and “Choleraexplosionen und Trinkwasserm” Muncherner medizinishe Wochenschrgit 48 (1894), 221–224, 248–251.

A small collectioom of his reprints and decorations and a fine oil portrait, survive in the rebuilt Max v. Pettenkofer Institute of the University of Munich. The bulk of his papers are in the Bavarian State Museum in Munich.

II. Secondary Literature. Obituaries in German include “Nachruf Max von Pettenkofer gewidemet,” in Archiw f¨r Hygiene 39 (1901), 313–320; R. Emmerich, “Erincrungen adn Max v. Peterkofer,” in Deutsche Recue 27 (1902), 81–92; F. Eirsmann, “Max von Pettenkopfer,” in Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift 27 (1901), 209–211, 253–255, 285–287, 299–302, 323–327; M.Gruberm” Max vo Pettenkoper (1818–1901),” in Wiener ktmische wochenschrific 14 (1901), 213–218; G. W.A. Kahlbaum, “Worte des Gedekens an Max von Pettenkoper,” inAbhandkugen der naturgiorschenden Gwaellschaft zu Basel 13 (1901) 326–377; K.B. Lehmann, “Max von Petterkoper,” in M¨nchener medizinische wocenschrigt 48 (1901), 464–473; L. Pfeiffer, “Zum Gedächtniss für Max von Pettenkofer,” in Hygienische Rundschau , II (1901), 717–732; M. Rubner, “Zum Andenken an Max v . Pettenkofer,” in Berliner klinische Wochenschrift,38 (1901), 268–270, 301–303, 321–326; C. Voilt “Mas von pettenkoper dem Physiologen, zum Gedächtnis,” in Zeitschrift für Biologie 41, n.s. 23 (1901) 1-V111, and Max vo Pettenkofer zun Gedachtiss (Munich, 1902)

Obituaries in English are by C. Childs “Geheimrath Max von Pettenkofer, of Munich,” in Transactions of the Epidemiological Soceity n.s. 20 (1901) 118–125; J. S. Haldane, “The work of Max von Pettenkofer,” in Journal of Hygiene 1. (1901), 289–294; and an editorial, with brief additional tributes by Sir john simon and W. H. C. Corfield, “Max Josef von Pettenkofer, M.Ds., in British Medical Journal (1901) 1, 489–490

Other German references bearing on Pettenkofer’s life and work are L.Buhl, “Ein BIlolgy 1 (1865), 1–25; Typus,” in Zeitschrifit für Biolotrag 1 (1865), 1–25; E. Ebstein, “Max Pettenkofer als junger Professor-und komodint,” in Deutsche medizinische Wocenchrifit 54 (1928), 1813–1814; R. Emmerich , “Max von Pettenkofer,” in Centralblat fur allgemieine Gesundheisoeflege 12 (1893), 207–217, and Max Pettenkofer’s Bodenlehre der Cholera Indica (Munich, 1910); H.Eyer, 100 Jahre Lehrstuhl fur Hygiene an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Vniversitá Munchen (Minch, 1965); K. M. Finkelnbug et al., Festshrift des niederrheinishen Vereins f¨r allgeminge gesundheitspflege, f¨r sdes centrablattes fur allgemine Gesundheilts-plfege, zur Feier des 50 jadhrign Dovtor-Jubila mus Max vin Pettenkofers am 30 Junit 1893 (Bonn, 1893); 1. Fischer, “Max von Pettenkofer ,” in Biographisches Lex ikon der hervorragender Aerzte 2nd ed., IV (1932), 576–577; Julnlhand dem Herrn Geh. Rath Prof Dr. M. Von. Pettkoger zu seinem 50jahrign dovtor-JUbilaum gewidmet vom seinen Schulen (arciiw f¨r Hygiene, 17) (1893); K.Kisskalt “Max von Pettenkofer,” in Grosse Natiurforscher H. W. Frickniger, ed. (Stuttgart, 1948); A. Kohut, “Ein Gedenkblatt zu seinem 8–0. Geburstage (3. December)” in Pharmaszeutische Ze¨ug 43 (1898), 853–855; K. B. Lehman “Max v. Pettenkofger und Seine verdienste um die wisscheftliche und praktische Hygiene,” in Deutsche Viertelkiahrssechrift f¨r offentliche Gesundhe¨spilege 25 (1893), 361–385; O. Neustatter, “Max Pettenkofer,” in M. Neuberger, ed. Meister der lleikunde VII (Vienna, 1925), 1–89; “Die Pettenkofer-Feier,” in M¨necher mediziniche Wocheschrift 40 (1893) 536–538; EL Roth, “Von Pettenkofer als populárer Schrifisteller,” in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift f¨r offentUche Gesundheitspflege , 25 (1893) 386–396; L. Secdel, “Ueber den numerschen Zusammenhang, welcher zwiscghen derTyphus-Erkeankungen uns dem Standedes Grundwassers wahrend der letzten 9 Jahre in M¨nchen hervorgetreten ist,” in Zeitschrifit für Biology 1. (1865), 221–236; H. E. Sigerist, “Max Pettenkofer (1818–1901),” Grosse Aerzte (Munich, 1932), pp. 288–292; G. Zticker, Abheabdlungen aus der Seuheneschichte und Seuhenlehre 11. Die Cholera (giessin 1912), pp. 133–150, 290–299; J. Soyka, “Zur Aetologie, des Abdomianal Tybhus,” inArchiv f¨r Hygiene 6 (1887) 257–302; and R. Virchow, “Erwiderung an herrn von Pettenkofer,” in Berliner klinissche Wocheschenschrift 21 (1884), 490–491

Among English reference to Pettenkofer theories are G. Buchannan, “On Prof pettenkofer Theory of the Propagation of Cholera,” in Medical Times and Gzette 1 (1870), 283–285; W. Budd, Typhoid Fever… (London, 1874; reper New York, 1931); C. Childs, “The History of Typhod Fever in Munich,” in Lancet (1898), 1, 348–354; J. M.Cuningham, “Recent Experience in Cholera in INdia,” ibid (1874), 1. 477–479; H. M. Dietz. “The Activity of the Hygients F. Erismann in Moscow (Unpubished Documents and Letters to M. v. Pettenkofer). in Clio Medica 4 (1969), 203–210; E.E.Hume Max von Pettenkofer… (New York, 1927); E. McClellan, A Reply to an Address of prof Max von Pettenkofer of Munich …in Pracititoner, 19 (1877) 61–78, 148–160; C. E. A. winslow, “pettenkofer-The Last Stand,” in The Conquest of Epidemic Disease (Princeton, N.J., 1944), chap 15 pp. 311–336

Claude E. Dolman