Friedrich Loeffler


Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald.

Biography

He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1874. He worked with Robert Koch from 1879 to 1884 as an assistant in the Imperial Health Office in Berlin. In 1884, he became staff physician at the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and four years later became professor at the University of Greifswald.
His development of original methods of staining rendered an important and lasting service to bacteriology. Early in his career, he began a study of parasitic diseases. Among his discoveries was the organism causing diphtheria and the cause of foot-and-mouth disease. His description of the diphtheria bacillus, published in 1884, was the originating cause of an antitoxin treatment. He also created Löffler's serum, a coagulated blood serum used for the detection of the bacteria. In 1887, he founded the Centralblatt für Bakteriologie und Parasitenkunde.
The Friedrich Loeffler Institute on the Isle of Riems near Greifswald, as well as the at the Greifswald Medical School of the University of Greifswald, have been named in his honor.

Selected publications

  • with Robert Koch and Georg Theodor August Gaffky: Ueber die Verwerthbarkeit heißer Wasserdämpfe zu Desinfectionszwecken. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamte. 1, 1881, pp. 322–340.Vorlesungen über die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Lehre von den Bakterien. Leipzig 1887.
  • with Paul Frosch: Summarische Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Untersuchungen der Kommission zur Erforschung der Maul- und Klauenseuche bei dem Institut für Infektionskrankheiten in Berlin. In: Centralblatt für Bakteriologie und Parasitenkunde. volume 22, 1897, pp. 257–259, and volume 23, 1898, pp. 371–391.Zur Immunitätsfrage. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamte. 1, 1882, pp. 134–187.Untersuchungen über die Bedeutung der Mikroorganismen für die Entstehung der Diphtherie beim Menschen, bei der Taube und beim Kalbe. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamte. 2, 1884, pp. 421–499.