Professor Bier In Action
Professor Bier and Assistants
The University Frauenklinik (Women's Hospital)
Back to Austrian and German Tour of Hospitals and Clinics

Professor Bier and Assistants

Digital download: £3.00

Image Details

Date 1912
Location Berlin
Description August Bier (1861-1949) is a towering figure in the history of surgery and anaesthesia.

Born in Helsen, Bier studied medicine in Leipzig and Berlin. He performed the first operation with spinal anaesthesia (later named spinal block) in 1898 at the Royal Surgical Hospital of the University of Kiel. Bier injected cocaine into the spinal canal, after himself and his assistant Hildebrandt had experimented on their own bodies.

Bier held a number of professorships; in Greifswald, Bonn and also in Berlin, where he became Geheimrat Professor of Surgery and Chief Surgeon at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin in Berlin.
Format Photograph
Original Index Number 54