Gustav von Bergmann

Who was Gustav von Bergmann?

Gustav von Bergmann was a German internist born in Würzburg. He was the son of renowned surgeon Ernst von Bergmann.

In 1903 he received his doctorate at Strasbourg, and afterwards worked at the 2nd medical hospital in Berlin under Friedrich Kraus. In 1916 he became a full professor of internal medicine in Marburg, and later a professor at Frankfurt am Main, the Berlin Charité and Munich.

He was a proponent of "functional pathology", and is considered to be one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine. His research involved investigations into gastro-intestinal ulcers, hypertension and studies of the autonomic nervous system. Today, the "Gustav-von-Bergmann-Medaille" is the highest honor awarded by the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin.

Bergmann was co-publisher of the multi-volume Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie. Other noted works of his include:

Funktionelle Pathologie, 1932

Neues Denken in der Medizin, 1947

He attended to physiologist Emil von Behring during the night prior to Behring's death of a pulmonary inflammation on March 31, 1917.