Franz König (10 February 1832 – 12 December 1910) was a German

surgeon In modern medicine, a surgeon is a medical professional who performs surgery. Although there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon usually is also a licensed physician or received the same medical training as ...

. The son of a physician, he was born in

Rotenburg an der Fulda Rotenburg an der Fulda (officially ''Rotenburg a.d. Fulda'') is a town in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in northeastern Hesse, Germany lying, as the name says, on the river Fulda (river), Fulda. Geography Location The town lies south of the S ...

. In 1855 he received his doctorate from the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

, and was later district wound surgeon (''Amtswundarzt'') in

Hanau Hanau () is a town in the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located 25 km east of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main and is part of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region. Its Hanau Hauptbahnhof, station is a ...

. Afterwards he was a professor of surgery at the universities of

Rostock Rostock (), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (german: link=no, Hanse- und Universitätsstadt Rostock), is the largest city in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the state, c ...

(from 1869) and

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

(from 1875), and eventually at the Charité-Berlin, where in 1895 he succeeded

Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben (1 March 1819 – 24 September 1895) was a German surgeon born in Frankfurt (Oder). He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Giessen, Paris and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1841 with a thesis on t ...

. In 1904 he was succeeded at the Charité by Otto Hildebrand. He died in

Grunewald Grunewald is the name of both a locality and a forest in Germany: * Grunewald (forest) * Grunewald (locality) Grünewald may refer to: * Grünewald (surname) * Grünewald, Germany, a municipality in Brandenburg, Germany * Grünewald (Luxembourg), ...

near

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. König is largely remembered for his work in

bone A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...

and

joint A joint or articulation (or articular surface) is the connection made between bones, ossicles, or other hard structures in the body which link an animal's skeletal system into a functional whole.Saladin, Ken. Anatomy & Physiology. 7th ed. McGraw ...

surgery. He was the first surgeon to perform a successful internal fixation of proximal

femur The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates with ...

fractures. In 1887, he published a paper on the cause of loose bodies in the joint. In his paper, König concluded: # That trauma had to be very severe to break off parts of the joint surface. # That lesser degrees of trauma might contuse the bone to cause an area of necrosis which might then separate. # That in some cases, the absence of trauma worth mentioning made it likely that there existed some spontaneous cause of separation. König named the disease "

osteochondritis dissecans Osteochondritis dissecans (OCD or OD) is a joint disorder primarily of the subchondral bone in which cracks form in the articular cartilage and the underlying subchondral bone. OCD usually causes pain during and after sports. In later stages ...

", describing it as a subchondral inflammatory process of the knee, resulting in a loose fragment of cartilage from the femoral

condyle A condyle (;Entry "condyle"
in
hemophilic arthropathy Haemophilia, or hemophilia (), is a mostly inherited genetic disorder that impairs the body's ability to make blood clots, a process needed to stop bleeding. This results in people bleeding for a longer time after an injury, easy bruising, ...

. He is credited for formulating three stages of hemophilic joint disease.Looking Back on X-Rays and Hemophilic Arthropathy
Richards Review 05-2011_Layout 1 5/19/11

Associated eponym

König's syndrome König's syndrome (synonym ileocaecal valve syndrome) is a syndrome of abdominal pain in relation to meals, constipation alternated with diarrhea, meteorism, gurgling sounds (hyper-peristalsis) on auscultation (especially in the right iliac fossa) ...

: Various abdominal symptoms caused by an incomplete obstruction of the

small intestine The small intestine or small bowel is an organ in the gastrointestinal tract where most of the absorption of nutrients from food takes place. It lies between the stomach and large intestine, and receives bile and pancreatic juice through the p ...

Notes

References

''Franz König''
at

Who Named It ''Whonamedit?'' is an online English-language dictionary of medical eponyms and the people associated with their identification. Though it is a dictionary, many eponyms and persons are presented in extensive articles with comprehensive bibliograph ...

Proximal femur fractures: the pioneer era of 1818 to 1925
Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2004 Feb;(419):306-10. 1832 births 1910 deaths People from Rotenburg an der Fulda German surgeons Academic staff of the University of Göttingen Academic staff of the University of Rostock Physicians of the Charité {{Germany-med-bio-stub University of Marburg alumni