Gustav von Bergmann

Gustav von Bergmann (December 24, 1878 – September 16, 1955) was a German internist born in Würzburg. He was the son of renowned surgeon Ernst von Bergmann (1836-1907).

In 1903 he received his doctorate at Strasbourg, and afterwards worked at the second medical hospital in Berlin under Friedrich Kraus. In 1916 he became a full professor of internal medicine in Marburg, and later a professor at Frankfurt am Main (from 1920), the Berlin Charité (from 1927) and Munich (from 1946).

He was a proponent of "functional pathology", and is considered to be one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine. His research involved investigations into gastro-intestinal ulcers, hypertension and studies of the autonomic nervous system. From 1994 to 2010, the Gustav-von-Bergmann-Medaille was the highest honor awarded by the German Society of Internal Medicine.^[1]

With Albrecht Bethe and Gustav Georg Embden, he was co-publisher of the multi-volume Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie. With Rudolf Stähelin, he published the second edition of Handbuch der inneren Medizin.^[2] Other noted works of his include:

• Das vegetative Nervensystem und seine Störungen (The autonomic nervous system and its disorders). 1926.
• Funktionelle Pathologie (Functional pathology), 1932.
• Neues Denken in der Medizin (New reasoning in medicine), 1947.

He attended to physiologist Emil von Behring during the night prior to Behring's death of a pulmonary inflammation on March 31, 1917.^[2]

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