Edmund Weil (16 April 1879 – 15 June 1922) was a

German Bohemian German Bohemians (german: Deutschböhmen und Deutschmährer, i.e. German Bohemians and German Moravians), later known as Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part o ...

bacteriologist. He is best known for the

Weil–Felix test The Weil–Felix test is an agglutination test for the diagnosis of rickettsial infections. It was first described in 1916. By virtue of its long history and of its simplicity, it has been one of the most widely employed tests for rickettsia on a g ...

used in the diagnosis of

rickettsial ''Rickettsia'' is a genus of nonmotile, gram-negative, nonspore-forming, highly pleomorphic bacteria that may occur in the forms of cocci (0.1 μm in diameter), bacilli (1–4 μm long), or threads (up to about 10 μm long). The term "rickett ...

infections. He conducted this research during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and died from an accidental typhus infection in his laboratory.

Life and work

Weil was born in Stráž, son of merchant Simon and Adelheid née Kohner. After education at

Cheb Cheb (; german: Eger) is a town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 30,000 inhabitants. It lies on the river Ohře. Before the 1945 Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia, expulsion of the German-speaking population ...

and

Plzeň Plzeň (; German and English: Pilsen, in German ) is a city in the Czech Republic. About west of Prague in western Bohemia, it is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 169,000 inhabita ...

he went to study medicine at the University of Prague. After graduating in 1903, he became a pathologist in Berlin. In 1905, he became an assistant to Hans Chiari at the serology department at the University of Prague and habilitated in 1909. In 1911 he worked with Viktor Kafka on the reaction of cerebrospinal fluid with blood. In 1913, he was proposed as a professor but an appointment was made only in 1915. He worked briefly at the laboratory of Rudolf Weigl. During World War I, he worked in laboratories on the Galician and Balkan borders. He had to work with soldiers affected by typhus and was able to establish a sero-diagnostic test in 1916 which is called the

. It involves placing patient's serum in a suspension with enteric bacteria (''Proteus'' sp.). The antibodies formed against rickettsia react with the bacteria but the test is no longer used due to its non-specificity. When a colleague, Friedrick Brienl accidentally sprayed some rickettsia while injecting a laboratory animal and it is thought that Weil too contracted a form of typhus and died at the Institute of Hygiene where he worked. He died on 15 June 1922 in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, at the age of 43.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weil, Edmund 1879 births 1922 deaths People from Tachov District Pathologists from Austria-Hungary Czechoslovak physicians