Emil Theodor Kocher

Emil Theodor Kocher
Birthday	Wednesday, August 25, 1841
Birthplace	Bern, Switzerland
Died	Friday, July 27, 1917
Known for	Developer of Thyroid surgery

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Kocher, Emil Theodor

 

Born Aug. 25, 1841, in Bern; died there July 27, 1917. Swiss surgeon; one of the pioneers of modern aseptic abdominal surgery.

Kocher graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Bern in 1865, having been a student of T. T. Billroth and B. Langenbeck. From 1872 to 1911 he was director of the surgical clinic of the University of Bern.

Kocher elaborated the surgical access to all of the major joints of the human body. He proposed a number of new surgical instruments (hemostatic forceps, a grooved probe for goiter operations, a glass drainage tube, stomach forceps), which now bear his name. Kocher was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909 for his work on the surgical treatment of affections of the thyroid gland. He was an honorary member of many foreign scientific institutions and societies, including the N. I. Pirogov Russian Surgical Society.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Rukovodstvo k operativnoi khirurgii. St. Petersburg, 1898.
Uchenie o khirurgicheskikh operatsiiakh, parts 1-2. St. Petersburg, 1909-11.

REFERENCE

Rosnovskii, A. A. “Teodor Kokher (K 50-letiiu so dnia smerti).” Khirurgiia, 1968, no. 4.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.