Franz König (10 February 1832 – 12 December 1910) was a German
surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...
. 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, in central Germany, situated, as the name says, on the river Fulda (river), Fulda.
Geography
Location
The town ...
.
In 1855 he received his doctorate from the
University of Marburg
The Philipps University of Marburg () is a public research university located in Marburg, Germany. It was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Prote ...
, and was later district wound surgeon (''Amtswundarzt'') in
Hanau
Hanau () is a city in the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is 25 km east of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main and part of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region. Its railway Hanau Hauptbahnhof, station is a ma ...
. Afterwards he was a professor of surgery at the universities of
Rostock
Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...
(from 1869) and
Göttingen
Göttingen (, ; ; ) 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. According to the 2022 German census, t ...
(from 1875), and eventually at the
Charité-Berlin, where in 1895 he succeeded
Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben. 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 of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
.
König is largely remembered for his work in
bone
A bone is a rigid organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells, store minerals, provide structure and support for the body, ...
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 (; : femurs or femora ), or thigh bone is the only long bone, bone in the thigh — the region of the lower limb between the hip and the knee. In many quadrupeds, four-legged animals the femur is the upper bone of the hindleg.
The Femo ...
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 o ...
",
describing it as a
subchondral inflammatory process of the knee, resulting in a loose fragment of cartilage from the
femoral .
In 1892 he provided a comprehensive description of
hemophilic arthropathy
Haemophilia (British English), or hemophilia (American English) (), 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 long ...
. 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 (anatomy), organ in the human gastrointestinal tract, gastrointestinal tract where most of the #Absorption, absorption of nutrients from food takes place. It lies between the stomach and large intes ...
.
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 bibliograp ...
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