Max Schede

Who was Max Schede?

Max Schede was a German surgeon who was a native of Arnsberg.

Schede studied medicine at the Universities of Halle, Heidelberg and Zurich, obtaining his medical doctorate in 1866. After serving as a doctor in the Austro-Prussian War, he became an assistant to Richard von Volkmann at Halle. During the Franco-Prussian War, he was in charge of a Feldlazaretts. In 1875 he appointed head of the surgical department at Friedrichshain Hospital in Berlin, and from 1880, he practiced surgery at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg.

At Hamburg he was a catalyst towards the construction of Eppendorf Hospital, becoming head of its surgical department in 1888. In 1895 he was chosen professor of surgery at the University of Bonn. Schede was a pioneer of antisepsis in Germany.

In 1890 introduced a surgical procedure called thoracoplasty, an operation involving resection of the thorax for treatment of chronic empyema. His name is associated with the "Schede method", also known as "Schede's clot", a procedure that involves scraping off dead tissue in bone necrosis, allowing the cavity to fill with blood, then covering it with gauze and rubber.

In 1874 he was a co-founder of the journal Zentralblatt für Chirurgie.