Carl Ludwig Schleich

Carl Ludwig Schleich (July 19, 1859 - March 7, 1922) was a German surgeon and writer who was a native of Stettin, Pomerania.

He studied medicine in Zurich, Greifswald and Berlin, where he was an assistant to Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). In 1887 he received his doctorate at the University of Greifswald, and stayed there as an assistant until 1889. Afterwards he opened a private practice in Berlin, and in 1899 attained a professorship at the University of Berlin. In 1900 he became director of the Department of Surgery at Gross-Lichterfelde.

Schleich is remembered for his work involving local anesthesia. In the early 1890s he introduced a methodology of infiltration anesthesia by using a highly diluted cocaine solution. He was also a pioneer of glial research, and recognized that glial cells played a dynamic role in nervous system function. Schleich believed that an interconnected and interactive neuronal-glial network was a substrate for brain functions.

Among his written works was an influential treatise on hysteria research called Gedankenmacht und Hysterie. Schleich was also an accomplished poet and novelist. One of his better known fictional works was the popular Phantasien über den Sinn des Lebens, which translates to "Fantasy about the Meaning of Life".

His memoirs Besonnte Vergangenheit (1922) are the most successful memoirs in the German language, running well above 1 million copies. The book laid the commercial foundations of the German editor Ernst Rowohlt.