Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal
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Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal (born March 23, 1833; died January 27, 1890) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist from Berlin.
Westphal's contributions to medical science are many and varied; in 1871 he coined the term "agoraphobia", when he observed that some of his patients displayed extreme anxiety and feelings of dread when they had to enter certain public areas of the city. He demonstated a link between tabes dorsalis (nerve degeneration in the spinal cord) and paralysis in the mentally insane. Also, along with neurologist Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (1840-1921), he is credited with describing a deep tendon reflex anomaly in tabes dorsalis which became known as the Erb-Westphal symptom. His name is also shared with neurologist Ludwig Edinger (1855-1918) regarding the Edinger-Westphal nucleus, which is an accessory nucleus of the third oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve number III).
A large portion of his written work dealt with diseases of the spinal cord and neuropathology. Two of his assistants of note were neurologist Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919), and anatomist Karl Wernicke (1848-1905). His son, Alexander Karl Otto Westphal (1863-1941), was also a psychiatrist, who is associated with the Westphal-Piltz syndrome (neurotonic pupillary reaction).
