Ernst Sträussler

Who was Ernst Sträussler?

Ernst Sträussler was an Austrian neuropathologist born in the Moravian city of Ungarisch-Hradisch.

In 1895 he earned his medical doctorate at the University of Vienna, and afterwards worked at the psychiatric clinic of Julius Wagner-Jauregg. In 1907 he was habiliated for psychiatry and neurology in Prague, where in 1915 he attained the title of professor extraordinary. In 1919 he returned to Vienna.

Sträussler is remembered for his work in forensic psychiatry, as well as his research involving the histopathology of the central nervous system. With neurologist Georg Koskinas he performed important studies involving malaria inoculations as a type of therapy for progressive general paresis.

In 1936 with neurologists Josef Gerstmann and Ilya Scheinker, he described a rare prion disease that is usually regarded as a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Today this condition is known as Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome.