SCHöNLEIN, JOHANN LUCAS

(b. Bamberg, Germany, 30 November 1793: d. Bamberg, 23 January 1864)

medicine.

Schönlein was his country’s leading clinician, and his methods and teaching gave a new direction to German medicine. His brief paper on favus, which recognized for the first time a fungus parasite as the cause of a disease in man, contributed importantly to the understanding of contagious disease.

Schömlein was the only child of Thomas Schönlein, a successful ropemaker, and Margaretha Hümmer, who intended him at first to follow in his father’s occupation. But his scholarly interests soon became apparent and, largely through his mother’s intercession, he attended the local Gymnasium and proceeded to university studies.

A lifelong collector, Schönlein received early encouragement from a stones to insects. During visits to the country, he gathered plants. He had a continuing interest in paleobotany and collected fossil plants while touring Switzerland on vacations, In his reading on botany he especially admired Linnaeus and Linnaeus’ system of classification of plants. Zoology, too, drew Schönlein’s curiosity, and independently he dissected frogs and lizards.

Schönlein first studied the natural sciences in 1811 at the University of Landshut but later undertook the sstudy00000 of medicine. Tiedemann was his teacher of comparative anatomy. In 1813 he transerred to Würzburg, where, as at Landshut, Naturophilosophie still exerted an influence. But Döllinger, professor of anatomy and physiology, who provided Schönlein with a wealth of material illustration developmental anatomy, stressed observation. Schönlein’s dissertation on the metamorphosis of the brain, “Von der Hirnmentamorphose” (1816), reflected both approaches. After visits to Göttingen and Jena and after an interval during which he practical medicine. Schönleine became Privatdozent (1817) at Würzburg, lecturing in pathological anatomy.

In 1819 Schönlein was named provisional head of the medical clinic at the Julius Hospital in Würzburg. By 1824 he had been appointed ordinary professor od special pathology and therapy and was director of the clinic. He soon attracted students from throughtout Europe. At the clinic percussion and auscultation, which had been introduced in France, were first routinely used in Germany as diagnostic aids. Blood, urine, and various secretions were examined under the microscope and chemical reagents were utilized; autopsies provided still further information. Schönlein’s bedside teaching emphasized direct observation and careful reasoning. Each student followed the patients symptoms and the courses of their diseases.

Schönlein’s respect for the systems of classification used in teh natural sciences led him to develop his “natural historical school.” He disguished his approach from the “natural philosophical school,” and set forth his own “system”. He was conviced that, in much the same way that botanists and zoologists applied their systems, he could classify pathological conditions according to their charactereatics and symptoms and thus establish their relationships: three classes–morphae, haematoses, and neuroses–were subdivided into families, then groups.

At Würzburg, Schönlein married Theresa Heffner in 1827. Although he had been made an honorary citizen of Würzburg, he was forced to leave because of his liberal beliefs and associations. His academic appointment was rescinded in 1832. Having refused a post at Passau, he established a medical practice in Frankfurt but again had to leave.

In 1833 Schönlein became professor of medicine at Zurich, where a new hospital was built, providing him with fine facilities, and his fame grew. At Zurich he wrote two papers, which, besides his thesis, were his only publications. (His lectures were published by his pupils.) The first paper, on crystals in the urine of typhoid fever patients, was of little moment; but the second, a letter to Johannes Müller, occupying the cause of porrigo lupinosa, or favus: a minute parasitic fungus.

Schönlein’s paper related the sources of his interest in favus, a disease typiied by crusts that orm on the scalp. Following Bassi’s discovery confirmed by Audouin, that the silkworm disease muscardine is caused by a microscopic parastic fungus (Bassi suggested that certain disease in man might be similarly caused). Shoönlein examined infected silkworms, again confirming Bassi’s findings. Schoölein also noted the botanist Franz Unger’s Die Exantheme der Pflanzen (1833), where Unger described plant diseases in which fungi are present and suggested a parallel between plant exanthems “and like diseases of the animal organism,” In this connection Schoönelrein recalled his views “of the plant nature of many an impetigo,” and his examination of fragments of the “pustules” of favus obtained from his own patients revealed “the fungous nature” of the disease. His communication implicated a living parasitic plant organism as the understanding of contagious disease: but he never published on the further investigations he promised. Henle noted Schoönelein’s finding in 1840 in his paper “Von den Miasmen und Contagien und von den miasmatisch-contragioösen Krankheiten” but pointed out that it gad yet been shown whether the fungus actually caused the pustules or merely on them.

Meanwhile, Schoönlein had left Zurich in 1839 for political and personal reasons–he had not been made a citizen there because he was a Catholic. In 1840 he became professor of medicine at Berlintant, Robert Ramak, who in 1837 had seen the organism that caused favus but had not then recognized later named it Achorion schoenleinii. Gruby first of Schoönlein’s 1839 paper.

At Berlin, Schoönlein’s lectures and clinical work made him a guiding influence in medicine. His many distinguished students had included Schwann at Wuörzburg; Billroth and Virchow were among his students at Berlin.

Schoönlein let Berlin in 1859 to retire with his daughters in Bamberg; his only son had died the previous year on a botanical expedition, and his wife had died in 1846. At Bamberg he devoted time to his books and collections. Although he was interested in ethnology and other subjects, his fine collection of writings on epidemiology is evidence of his lasting concern with contagious disease.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Schönlein’s works are “Ueber Crystalle in Darmcanal bei Typhus absominalis,” in Archiv fiir Anatomie. Physiologie and wissenschaftliche Medicin (1836), 258–261; “Zur Pathogenie der Impetigines,” ibid (1839), 52. on favus.

II. Secondary Literature. Schönlein’s lectures, published by his pupils , appear in various eds., some noted in the soureces below (see also the catalotgs of the Library of the Surgeon Genral); they include Allgemeine und specielle Pathologie und Therapie. 4th ed. (St. Gallen, 1839). Rudolf Virhow, Gedaöchtnissrede auf Joh. Lucas Schoömlein (Berlin, 1865), is a comprehesive biography and appreciation; he added notes in “Aus Schoönlein Leben,” inArchiv fuör pathologische Anatmie und Physiologie und für klinische Medicin, 33 (1865), 170–174. A. Goöschen, “Johann Lucas Schoönlein,” in Deutsche Klink, 17 (1865), 29–3.2; and W. Griesinger, “Zum Gedaöchtnisse an J. L. Schoönlein,” in Aerzliches Intelligenz-Blatt, 11(1864). 445–451 and in Berliner klinische Wocherschrift, 1 (1864). 276–279, stress his contrbution as a clincian. J. Pagel. “Johann Lucas Schienlein,” in Biographisches Lexikon hervorraggenden Aörzte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, J. Pagel, ed.(Berlin-Vienna, 1901), 1522–1524, and his “Johann Lucas Schoenlein,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biogrpahie, XXXII (Leipzig, 1891), 315–319, are general accounts.

Erwin H. Ackerknecht, “Johan Lucas Schoenlein, 1793–1864,” in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 19 (1964), 313–138, has a face of hte paper in favus with a trans.

See also Walther Koerting, “Zum hundertjaöahrigen Todestag von Johann Lukas Schoenlein,” in Bayerisches Aörzteblatt, 19 (1964), 585–60; and W. Loöffler’s detailed study, “Johann Lucas Schoönlein (17893–1864, Zuörich 1833–1839) und die Medizin seiner Zeit,” in Zuörcher Spitalageshichte, Regierungsrat des Kanotons Zuörich, II (Zurich, 1951), 2–89; Friedrich von Muöller, “JohannLukas Schoönlein, Professor der Medezin, 1793–1864,” in Lebenslaöufe aus Franken, Gesllschaft fuör Frankiche Geschichte (Erlangen, 1936), 332–339; and Henry E. Sigerist, The Great Doctors, trans by Eden and Ceder Paul (New York, 1958), 295–299,336, W. Schoönfeld. “Aus der Fruö der Pilzerkrankungen des Menschen, Jean Victor Audouin (1797–1839), Agositino Bassi (1773–1856). Franz Unger (1800–1870),: in Deutsche medizinische Wochenscxhrifit, 82. pt 2 (1957). 1235–1237, reviews the background of the investigation of favus, For Schönlein’s description of peliosis rheumatica, or Schönlein’s disease, see R. H. Major. classic Descriptions of Disease, 3rd ed. (Springfield, Ill., 1945), 225–227, which is taken from the lectures published in 1841.

Gloria Robinson