American Medical Biographies/Althof, Hermann
Althof, Hermann (1835–1877)
Hermann Althof was born the eighth of August, 1835, at Horn, in Lippe-Detmold, Germany, and died in New York January 14, 1877, of erysipelas. He was the youngest son of a school teacher in his native town.
In 1847 he accompanied his father on a visit to his elder brother, who had settled in New York City. After his return he began to study medicine, first in Wurzburg, later in Zurich, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, where he received his diploma in the year 1857. Here Prof. A. von Graefe began to interest himself in the progress of his gifted pupil, with whom he tried to form a closer alliance by offering him a position as one of his assistants. Dr. Althof, however, left Berlin to continue his studies in Paris, where he studied ophthalmology under Desmarres, and afterwards practised in New York in 1858. Two years later he left the city again for Europe, spending part of a year in Wurzburg, with Prof. Muller, devoting himself to the study of pathological and microscopical anatomy, and part in Berlin with Graefe. After his return he devoted a large portion of his time to those public institutions to which he had become attached, the German Hospital and Dispensary, as well as the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary; in the latter he filled the place of executive surgeon for about eighteen months before his death. He was one of the founders of the Ophthalmological Society of New York and of the American Ophthalmological Society.
His contributions to Ophthalmological literature are all of importance. He published in "Graefe's Archiv," Bd. viii. Abthl. 1, Klinische Notizen on—
1. "Intraoculäre Blutungen."
2. "Auflagerungen auf die Lamina elastica anterior."
3. "Cancroid der Conjunctiva bulbi."
Further, a paper on "Canthoplasty: a Clinical Study," in the "Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society," vol. ii., part 2. Besides these, the transactions of the above-named societies contain a number of valuable communications relating to diseases of the eye. Among these a report of "Eight Cases of Subretinal Effusion," in all of which a spontaneous cure was observed.
Dr. Althof was esteemed by his colleagues for his extensive and well digested information; for his extraordinary powers of diagnosis, wonderful manual dexterity, and sound judgment; for his great, unselfish devotion to the duties of his profession.