SKETCH OF DR. MAX VON PETTENKOFER. 841 



SKETCH OF DR. MAX VON PETTENKOFER. 



" A CHAMPION against the Cholera " is the designation which 

 -A- Dr. Karl Stieler gives to the subject of this sketch, in his ad- 

 mirable biography of him in a former volume of " Daheim," to which 

 we shall be largely indebted for such parts of our own article as are 

 not mere date and detail. Since Dr. Stieler's article was written, Dr. 

 Pettenkofer has distinguished himself by intelligent and thorough 

 investigations in other forms of disease and in more extended fields of 

 sanitary science, to the practical results of which it is impossible to 

 attach too much value. 



Max von Pettenkofer was born December 3, 1818, at Lichten- 

 heim, a quiet rural estate not far from Neuberg, on the Danube. 

 When it came time to prepare for his life-career, he went to pursue 

 his studies at Munich, where his uncle was court pharmacist, and 

 there he occupied himself with such branches as were prescribed for 

 students who intended to become physicians branches which were 

 sharply laid down in an inflexible course, for it at that time seemed a 

 waste, says Dr. Stieler, to study anything that did not pertain to the 

 class-examination. Happily, these studies were suited to the young 

 man's taste ; and, when he was graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1843, 

 they pointed to the way which he had chosen. After graduation, led 

 in that direction by Fuchs, he turned his attention to chemistry, and 

 pursued that science, with physics, at Munich and Wiirzburg, and 

 under Liebig at Giessen, steadily keeping his eye fixed on the relation 

 of these branches to the healing art. In 1845 he was assistant in the 

 chief office of the mint in Munich. In 1847, when not quite twenty- 

 nine years old, he began his work as an academical teacher by accept- 

 ing an appointment as extraordinary professor in the medical faculty 

 at Munich. Six years later, in 1853, he became a regular professor, 

 having in the mean time succeeded his uncle as director of the court 

 pharmacy. Under his management this establishment became a real 

 scientific laboratory. His first labors were predominantly technologi- 

 cal, and related to the affinities of gold, the preparation of platinum, 

 and the hydraulic lime of England and Germany. He also found a 

 process for obtaining illuminating gases from wood, and investigated 

 hsematinon and aventurine glass. He made studies in oil-colors, in 

 the course of which he discovered a valuable method of preserving 

 oil-paintings. 



The peculiar and most evident direction, however, in which his 

 activity manifested itself was in the field of public hygiene, in which 

 he has accomplished an extraordinary amount. His first important 

 efforts in this region were his investigations of heating by stoves and 

 by air, of the conditions of house-ventilation, of the influence of soil 



