| 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 | 52 |
