Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to H R Wiedemann.
Stüve-Wiedemann syndrome (SWS) is, at last, beginning to emerge from the shadows of campomelic syndrome as a nosologically and, presumably, causally-distinct entity, first delineated in 1971 on the basis of 2 affected sisters. The fact that these sisters had an affected double first cousin supports autosomal-recessive inheritance of SWS.
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The letter that the famous anatomist Johann Friedrich Meckel, Sr. sent from Berlin on May 5, 1750 to the great Albrecht von Haller (at that time resident in Göttingen) contains the earliest reference to an unusual observation made by the former. Even today this observation is considered in the clinical literature to be the first description of a coarctation of the aorta. In fact, it is probably the first description of what is known today as Lutembacher syndrome.
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A brief description is given of a male dwarf painted by the Italian artist Geromo Induno in 1852. This portrayal seems not to have been mentioned previously in the medical literature. Several experts were consulted in an attempt to diagnose the underlying skeletal dysplasia. Most opted for pseudoachondroplasia, with the most detailed argument coming from the subject of this Festschrift.
We report on a German boy, born to nonconsanguineous parents, with an apparently new combination of multiple congenital anomalies including extraordinary hirsutism, marked brachycephaly, abnormal position of thumbs, pedes excavati with claw-toes, an abnormal face, and mental retardation. Additionally the boy manifests a disorder of uric acid metabolism. This sporadic case may represent a new syndrome due to a fresh autosomal or X-linked mutation, or chance-isolated case due to segregation of an autosomal recessive gene.
The great Swiss-German botanist Carl Wilhelm von Naegeli (1817-1891) was a student of Lorenz Oken, A.P. de Candolle, and Matthias Jacob Schleiden and became a key figure in "genetic" (i.e., evolutionary-developmental) biology in the mid-late 19th century. He was an expert on the hawk-weed, Hieracium and also made important contributions to microbiology. One of his many outstanding students was Carl Correns, one of the 3 rediscoverers of Mendel's work. Naegeli was an early proponent and defender of Darwin. The correspondence preserved in the Naegeli family contains many important letters between Naegeli and his contemporaries. Those from Mendel to Naegeli have passed out of the Naegeli family and were published by Correns earlier in the century. However, exceptionally notable items still in the archives of the Naegeli family include 4 surviving letters from Darwin, 2 letters from Virchow, and 10 from Justus von Liebig. In spite of a lack of appreciation of Mendel's work, we call attention to the importance of those surviving documents from an era in which very few of the greatest naturalists and founders of modern biology--including Goethe, Darwin, Galton, Agassiz, von Humboldt, von Baer--were without "blind spots."