Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel

Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel (30 April 1755, Berlin – 17 March 1803, Halle an der Saale) was a German anatomist, surgeon and obstetrician.

He was the son of Johann Friedrich Meckel, a professor of anatomy in Berlin. Two of Philipp's sons also became anatomists, Johann Friedrich (1781–1833), a professor at the University of Halle, and August Albrecht (1790-1829), a professor in Bern.

He studied medicine at the universities of Göttingen and Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1777 with a dissertation on the labyrinth of the inner ear. Following graduation he took an extended study trip to Paris, London and Edinburgh. From 1779 he served as a professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Halle, and in 1788 took on additional duties as head of the surgical unit at the hospital in Glaucha.^[1] On two separate occasions (1795, 1797) he was summoned as an obstetrician to St. Petersburg by the Russian royal family.^[2][3]

At Halle, he maintained and expanded upon an anatomical collection ("Meckelsche Sammlungen") that was initiated by his father.^[4]

Selected works

In 1782/83 he published a translation of Jean-Louis Baudelocque's work on childbirth as "Anleitung zur Entbindungskunst" (2 volumes). Other works associated with Meckel are:

• "Dissertatio anatomico-physiologica de labyrinthi auris contentis" (graduate thesis, 1777).
• "Dissertatio inauguralis medica de cognoscendo et curando diabete" (respondent, Karl Friedrich Creuzwieser), 1794.
• "Monographia generis iunci" (with Friedrich Wilhelm Gottlieb Rostkovius), 1801.
• "Dissertatio inauguralis medica, quae dolorem membri amputati remanentem explicat" (A. Lemos, respondent), later translated into English as: "The phantom limb; an 18th century Latin dissertation" (Latin and English text on alternate pages), 1972.
• "Anatomie und anatomische Sammlungen im 18. Jahrhundert : anlässlich der 250. Wiederkehr des Geburtstages von Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel (1755-1803)", by Rüdiger Schultka, Josef N. Neumann and Susanne Weidemann – Anatomy and anatomical collections in the 18th century: on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Philipp Friedrich Theodor Meckel (1755-1803).^[5][6]

References