Heinrich Sachs (1863 - 1928) was a late 19th and early 20th century German

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

and

neuroanatomist Neuroanatomy is the study of the structure and organization of the nervous system. In contrast to animals with radial symmetry, whose nervous system consists of a distributed network of cells, animals with bilateral symmetry have segregated, defin ...

best known for his atlas of the brain's

white matter White matter refers to areas of the central nervous system (CNS) that are mainly made up of myelinated axons, also called tracts. Long thought to be passive tissue, white matter affects learning and brain functions, modulating the distribution ...

Scientific career

Heinrich Sachs was born in

Halberstadt Halberstadt ( Eastphalian: ''Halverstidde'') is a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the capital of Harz district. Located north of the Harz mountain range, it is known for its old town center that was greatly destroyed by Allied bombi ...

, Germany, in 1863. He studied medicine in Berlin, graduating in 1885 with a dissertation on

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...

. After practicing as a physician for a few years, he joined neuropathologist Carl Wernicke's laboratory at University Hospital, Breslau, where he studied spatial perception and gained a postdoctoral qualification (

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

) in psychiatry and neurology in 1897. In 1892, Sachs published the first installment of an ambitious and informative atlas of the brain's white matter, with a focus on the anatomy of and connections between the

occipital The occipital bone () is a cranial dermal bone and the main bone of the occiput (back and lower part of the skull). It is trapezoidal in shape and curved on itself like a shallow dish. The occipital bone overlies the occipital lobes of the cereb ...

, temporal, and parietal lobes. Wernicke wrote the preface, expressing enthusiasm and admiration for the project. Further volumes were planned, but Sachs never completed them. The existing volume has recently been translated into English for the first time. Among Sachs's contentions was that the superior fronto-occipital fasciculus (now called the

Probst bundle Longitudinal callosal fascicles, or Probst bundles, are aberrant bundles of axons that run in a front-back (antero-posterior) direction rather than a left-right direction between the cerebral hemispheres. They are characteristic of patients with a ...

) derived from

callosal The corpus callosum (Latin for "tough body"), also callosal commissure, is a wide, thick nerve tract, consisting of a flat bundle of commissural fibers, beneath the cerebral cortex in the brain. The corpus callosum is only found in placental mam ...

fibers. For this reason, it has been suggested that the Probst bundle be renamed the Sachs-Probst bundle. This suggestion has not been taken up, but Sach's name has been used for other structures and paths in the brain, such as the ''asciculus occipitalis transversus'' of Vialet and Sachs and the ''stratum sagittalis'' of Sachs. A structure that Sachs labeled the ''stratum profundum convexitatis'' in his atlas was the subject of controversy at the time, with leading neuropathologist Theodor Meynert denying its very existence; it is now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus. Sachs also published on

aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in th ...

(1893, 1905) and traumatic neurosis (1909). He died in Breslau in 1928.

Personal life

Sachs married the daughter of a merchant family in Breslau; the couple's daughter was the poet

Lessie Sachs Lessie Sachs (1897–1942) was a German-born American poet and artist who was active during World War I and World War II. Biography Lessie Sachs was born in 1897 in Breslau, then a city in the German Empire. She was the only child of neurologist ...

. In his private files, Sachs stated to the royal university to be of Jewish-Protestant faith.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sachs, Heinrich 1863 births 1928 deaths German neuroscientists People from Halberstadt German neurologists