Alfred Kast

Who was Alfred Kast?

Alfred Kast was a German internist.

He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg and Leipzig, earning his doctorate in 1879. He served as an assistant to Wilhelm Heinrich Erb in Heidelberg, Julius Friedrich Cohnheim in Leipzig, and from 1881 was a clinical assistant to Christian Bäumler at Freiburg. Here he also worked in the physiological-chemical institute. In 1886 he became an associate professor, followed by a directorship at Eppendorf Hospital in Hamburg. He 1892 he was named professor of internal medicine at the University of Breslau.

Kast was instrumental in introducing phenacetin and the sulphonal group of drugs into medicine. His name is associated with "Kast’s syndrome", a condition synonymous to Mafucci syndrome.