Julius Dreschfeld

Julius Dreschfeld FRCP (13 October 1845 – 13 June 1907) was a leading British physician and pathologist.

Life Julius Dreschfeld was born as the youngest of ten siblings on 13 October 1845 at Niederwerrn, in the Schweinfurt district of Bavaria. His parents, Samuel and Giedel, were well-off, well-respected Orthodox Jewish people who derived their livelihood from merchanting.

Educated initially at nearby Bamberg, in 1861 Dreschfeld travelled to be with a brother, Leopold, in Manchester, England. Dreschfeld then pursued further medical studies at the University of Würzburg from 1864, from where he gained his MD degree in 1867. He served as an assistant surgeon in the Bavarian Army during the brief Austro-Prussian War of 1866.

Dreschfeld had been preparing to fulfil an invitation to give the annual Lumleian Lecture at the time of his death from heart failure on 13 June 1907 at his home in Withington. He had thought that he had been suffering from influenza. There were two sons and two daughters, including the artist Violet Dreschfeld, from his first marriage with Selina Gaspari; he had married Ethel Lilley in 1905, a year after Selina's death. He had converted from Judaism to Anglicanism and was buried at Holy Trinity, Southport.