LAUSR

200 years ago, on 22 February 1822, Adolf Kußmaul was born in Graben near Karlsruhe in Germany, and is renowned as being one of the most prominent internists of the nineteenth century. Every medical student in the world learns the name Kußmaul through his precise description of “deep” breathing in diabetic ketoacidosis. His scientific interests covered many fields of medicine: he developed a stomach pump, was one of the first to attempt gastroscopy, described periarteritis nodosa and conducted research on disorders of the speech. Yet, there remains a lesser known accomplishment, as it was Kußmaul who invented the figure of “Herr Biedermeier”, with whose poems the young Kußmaul joked about the petit-bourgeois habits of the time. Much later, Biedermeier became the name affiliated with an epoch in European cultural history.