Julius Althaus

Julius Althaus (31 March 183311 June 1900) was a German-English physician. He conducted early electrical treatment of patients at King's College Hospital and he was mainly instrumental in creating the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases. His father was general superintendent of Lippe-Detmold, a Protestant dignity equal to the Anglican rural dean; his mother was a daughter of the last Protestant bishop of Magdeburg. He received his classical education at the University of Bonn, and began his medical studies at Göttingen in 1851 continuing in Heidelberg and graduated M.D. at Berlin in 1855, with a thesis de Pneumothorace. He then visited Sicily with Professor Johannes Peter Müller to study zoology. He worked under Professor Jean Martin Charcot in Paris.

Althaus was the physician at the Hospital for Epilepsy and Paralysis until 1894, when he was appointed to the honorary office of consulting physician. Althaus married Anna Wilhelmina Pelzer in June 1859, and had two sons and a daughter, of whom the latter survived him. He was greatly interested in the therapeutic effects of electricity.

Works Following Althaus' death, an obituarist described him as "a voluminous writer, and published many books and papers on various aspects of nervous disease." A modern biography called this an understatement, acknowledging his works in the wider field of medicine throughout his lifetime. Some of his works include:

A treatise on medical electricity, theoretical and practical, and its use in the treatment of paralysis, neuralgia, and other diseases, 1859. The spas of Europe, 1862. On paralysis, neuralgia, and other affections of the nervous system: and their successful treatment by galvanisation and faradisation, 1864. On epilepsy, hysteria and ataxy; three lectures, 1866. Diseases of the nervous system, their prevalence and pathology, 1877. On infantile paralysis and some allied diseases of the spinal cord: their diagnosis and treatment, 1878. Functions of the brain; a popular essay, 1880. On failure of brain power: its nature and treatment, 1882 (5 editions). On sclerosis of the spinal cord: including locomotor ataxy, spastic spinal paralysis, and other system-diseases of the spinal cord: their pathology, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment, 1885, translated into German, Leipzig, 1884, and into French by J. Morin, with a preface by Prof. Charcot, Paris, 1885. Influenza: its pathology, symptoms, complications, and sequels; its origin and mode of spreading; and its diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, 1892.