Oscar Liebreich

Matthias Eugen Oscar Liebreich (14 February 1839 – 2 July 1908) was a German pharmacologist.

Biography

He was a native of Königsberg. He studied chemistry under Carl Remigius Fresenius (1818–1897) in Wiesbaden, and studied medicine in Königsberg, Tübingen and Berlin, obtaining his degree in 1865. Beginning in 1867, he worked as an assistant in the chemistry department of the pathological institute under Rudolf Virchow. Later on, he became a professor of therapeutics (1868) and director of the pharmacology institute in Berlin (1872). In 1889 he was co-founder of the Balneologischen Gesellschaft (Balneology Society) in Berlin, and was its chairman until his death in 1908.

Contributions

Liebreich introduced the method of phaneroscopic illumination for the study of lupus; showed the value of cantharidin in tuberculosis, of mercuric formamide and of lanolin in syphilis, of butylchloral hydrate and of ethylene chloride as anesthetics. In 1865, he gave the name "protagon" to a proximate principle discovered in the brain and in blood corpuscles.