Heinrich Quincke

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Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke (26 August 1842 - 19 May 1922) was a German internist and surgeon. His main contribution to internal medicine was the introduction of the lumbar puncture for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. After 1874, his main area of research was pulmonary medicine.

Born at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Heinrich was the son of prominent physician Hermann Quincke and the younger brother of physicist Georg Hermann Quincke. He received his doctorate in 1863 from the University of Berlin, having studied previously at the University of Heidelberg and at the University of Würzburg under Rudolf Virchow and Albert von Kölliker.

In 1865, Quincke worked with physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke at the University of Vienna, and in 1866, he became the assistant to the surgeon Robert Ferdinand Wilms. He was an "assistenzarzt" (subordinate physician) in internal medicine under Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs at the Charité in Berlin until 1870.

In 1873, Quincke became a professor of internal medicine at the University of Berne. Five years later, he moved to the University of Kiel and became a professor emeritus in 1908.

Two medical conditions and one procedure were named for Dr.Quincke. He was perhaps the first to recognize Angioedema which has often been referred to as "Quincke's disease. Another is "Quincke's pulse" with redness and pallor seen under the fingernails; a sign of aortic insufficiency or capillary pulse and the third and most significant, "Quincke's puncture" or lumbar puncture for examination of the spinal fluid which is used to diagnose a number of muscular diseases. He died in Frankfurt (Main) where he had been giving lectures.