Johann Lukas Schönlein

Johann Lukas Schönlein was a German naturalist and professor of medicine, born in Bamberg on 30 November 1793. He studied medicine at Landshut, Jena, Göttingen and Würzburg, taught at Würzburg and Zurich, and was called to Berlin in 1839 to teach therapeutics and pathology. He was one of the first German medical professors to lecture in German rather than Latin. He described the allergic purpura now called Henoch-Schönlein purpura, identified the fungal cause of favus, the ringworm of the scalp that later received the species name Trichophyton schoenleinii, and in 1832 was the first to publish the name tuberculosis for what had been called consumption. He served as physician to Frederick William IV and died in 1864.