Hermann Senator

Who was Hermann Senator?

Hermann Senator was a German internist who was a native of Gnesen in the Prussian Province of Posen.

He studied medicine in Berlin, where he received his medical doctorate in 1857. Among his instructors in Berlin were Johannes Peter Müller, Johann Lukas Schönlein and Ludwig Traube. In 1875 he became chief physician in the internal medicine department at the Augusta-Hospital, and in 1881 became head physician at the Berlin Charité.

After the death of Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs, he became head of the "first medical clinic" at Berlin for a few months. In 1888 his department at the Charité was made into the "third medical clinic", expanded and made a part of a policlinic with Senator as its director. Beginning in 1872 he was co-editor of Centralblatt für die medizinischen Wissenschaften.

Hermann Senator made several contributions in internal medicine, particularly his research in the field of nephrology. He published an influential study of fever, and also penned works on diabetes and albuminuria. In 1868 he introduced his theory of "autointoxication", of which he speculated that "self-infection" originating in the intestines could be a source of disease elsewhere in the human body. He also believed that autointoxication could be the root cause of certain mental disorders.