Moritz Benedikt

Who was Moritz Benedikt?

Moritz Benedikt was an Hungarian-Austrian neurologist who was a native of Eisenstadt.

He was an instructor and professor of neurology at the University of Vienna. Benedikt was a physician with the Austrian army during the Second Italian War of Independence and the Austro-Prussian War.

Benedikt was a specialist in the fields of electrotherapeutics and neuropathology. His name is lent to the eponymous "Benedikt's syndrome", a disease characterized by ipsilateral oculomotor paralysis with contralateral tremor and hemiparesis caused by a lesion involving the red nucleus and corticospinal tract in the midbrain tegmentum.

Benedikt is remembered today for his controversial research in criminal anthropology. He performed numerous cephalometric studies, and postulated that there were specific differences between "normal" and "criminal brains". He explained his research on the subject in a book titled "Anatomical Studies upon the Brains of Criminals".

Benedikt is credited for coining the word "darsonvalisation" to describe therapeutic or experimental applications of high frequency. Darsonvalisation was named in honor of French biophysicist Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval.