The role of Herman Hoppe of Cincinnati in the initial clinical recognition of myasthenia gravis.
One of the earliest papers describing a case of what came to be known as myasthenia gravis was written in 1892 in the German language by an American, Herman Hoppe, who at the time was an assistant in the Berlin polyclinic of the prominent German neurologist. Hermann Oppenheim. At Oppenheim's instigation, Hoppe published the pathology of a case that Oppenheim had diagnosed during life; he collected all the reported similar cases and tried to establish a symptom-complex, for which he was given credit in Oppenheim's great neurology textbook of 1894. Upon his return to Cincinnati, Ohio, Hoppe's European experience qualified him as a specialist in nervous and mental diseases. His private practice of "neuropsychiatry" was his main occupation, but he also volunteered to teach as Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases at the University of Cincinnati. In 1901 Oppenheim published the first monograph about what he called "Die Myasthenische Paralyse (Bulbarparalyse ohne anatomischen Befund)", summarizing 60 cases described in the medical literature up to that time. Hoppe, on the other hand, wrote on myasthenia gravis only once again, a review article in 1914 in a Cincinnati weekly, giving Oppenheim credit for the establishment of the disease as a clinical entity.
Keesey
John
J
Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA. jkeesey@ucla.edu
D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009157:Myasthenia Gravis / Q000266:history*; D009462:Neurology / Q000266:history; D009820:Ohio