Christian Albert Theodor Billroth

Austrian surgeon born in Bergen auf Rügen, Prussia, now Germany, pioneer of modern abdominal surgery, larynx (1874) and bowel resection (1881). From a family of Swedish origin, he studied at the German universities of Greifswald, Göttingen and Berlin, where he received a degree in medicine (1852). He was an assistant (1853-1860) in the laboratory of Bernhard von Langenbech, until he was appointed Professor of Clinical Surgery in Zurich (1860). He then returned to Vienna to become Professor of Surgery at the University of Vienna (1867). He was professor of surgery at Zurich (1860-1867) and Vienna (1867-1894).
He wrote a monograph on polyps recognizing the relationship between adenomatous polyps and colon rectal cancers (1855). He was the first surgeon to extract rectal cancer, repeating such operations dozens of times. He is best known for two types of partial gastrectomy, the first performed on a 43-year-old woman (1881) for extraction of a gastric pyloric cancer, removing part of the stomach and applying approximately 50 sutures of carbolized silk, for an hour and a half.


The postoperative period consisted of the first 24 hours only ice through the mouth, then peptone enema with wine and, the next day, a spoon of sour milk soup per hour and then one every half hour, accompanied by a small daily injection of morphine to sleep the night. The patient did not complain of pain in the operative area and had no febrile reaction. He was also considered an excellent musician, including being close friends with Johannes Brahms and occasionally being conductor as guest of the Zurich Symphony Orchestra, and died in Abbazia, Austria-Hungary, today Opatija, Croatia.
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG

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