Wilhelm Alexander Freund

Who was Wilhelm Alexander Freund?

Wilhelm Alexander Freund was a German gynecologist who was a native of Krappitz, Silesia.

In 1855 he earned his medical degree at the University of Breslau, and afterwards practiced medicine in Breslau. In 1879 he moved to Strasbourg, where he was a professor of gynecology and obstetrics. He died in Berlin.

In January 1878, Freund performed the first abdominal extirpation of a cancerous uterus. Twenty years later in 1898, Austrian gynecologist Ernst Wertheim became the first physician to completely extirpate the uterus via the abdomen.

The eponymous "Freund's anomaly" is a narrowing of the upper thoracic aperture by shortening of the first rib and associated cartilage.