Ernst von Bergmann

Who was Ernst von Bergmann?

Ernst von Bergmann was a Baltic German surgeon. He is a pioneer of aseptic surgery.

Born in Riga, Livonia Governorate, in 1860 he earned his doctorate at the University of Dorpat, and later returned to Dorpat in 1871, where he was a professor of surgery until 1878. After spending a few years as a professor at Würzburg, he moved to the University of Berlin in 1882, where he remained for the remainder of his career. Two of his assistants in Berlin were Curt Schimmelbusch and Friedrich Gustav von Bramann. His son, Gustav von Bergmann was a noted doctor of internal medicine.

Bergmann was the first physician to introduce heat sterilisation of surgical instruments, thus greatly reducing the number of infections in surgery. Thus increased the responsibility of the surgeon for the inflammation after procedures. He was a surgeon in the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, where he gained experience treating cranial trauma and neurological disorders. Bergmann published several surgical works, including a classic treatise on cranial surgery titled Die Chirurgische Behandlung der Hirnkrankheiten.