Theodor Bilharz - Medical Career

Medical Career

In 1850 he accompanied his former teacher, Wilhelm Griesinger, to Egypt and became the first chief of the surgery at the Kasr-el-Aini Medical School and Kasr El Aini Hospital of Cairo. There he also held the position of senior consultant for the department of internal medicine, and also served in the military where he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel (Kaimakam.) In 1851, Bilharz discovered the cestode worm Hymenolepis nana living in the small intestine of an Egyptian male. Also, in 1851, during an autopsy, he discovered the trematode worm that is the cause of urinary schistosomiasis, initially naming it Distomum haematobium. It was subsequently noted that only one of the suckers contained an oral cavity, and in 1856 Heinrich Meckel von Hemsbach proposed that the organism be renamed Bilharzia haematobium. In 1858 Weinland proposed the name Schistosoma (Greek: 'split body') after the male worms' morphology, and the name Schistosoma haematobium was officially adopted by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. In 1853 Bilharz became chief of medicine, and in 1856 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy.