Carl Freiherr Ritter von Heine

He was born as Carl Freiherr Ritter von Heine in Cannstadt near Stuttgart. He comes from the famous Heine family. His grandfather Johann Georg Heine was the first instrument maker in surgery and orthopaedic mechanic. According to the description at the time, his father and his uncles rendered "immortal services" to orthopaedics. Heine studied in Tübingen and Würzburg. After his studies he travelled and continued his studies in Paris, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin. During the German-Danish war he gained experience in a Prussian field hospital and published it in a paper on gunshot wounds to the lower extremities. In 1865 he habilitated in Heidelberg and took over the clinic 3 years later, after his boss Otto Weber had died of diphtheria. One year later he accepted the call to Innsbruck as the first holder of the teaching post. His place of work was still the first floor of the hospital building at Marktgraben. Here he wrote his famous contributions to the Pitha-Billroth handbook on the hospital fire. He became an Austrian citizen and was ennobled by the Emperor. In 1873 he received the order to establish the 2nd Surgical Clinic in Prague. Among his works were much read articles on the anus praeter naturalis, prostate hypertrophy, resection of the larynx in laryngeal stenosis and the surgical removal of pseudoarthroses. Prof. von Heine died in Prague in 1877 at the age of 40, he too was a victim of diphtheria. He left a collection of anatomical preparations bearing his name to the Prague Medical Faculty.