Studies on the Cause of Fever

Abstract

WHILE Dr. George Shattuck, the founder of this lectureship, was Dean of the Harvard Medical School, a young Prussian, John Benedict Frese, entered the University of Dorpat as a student of medicine. As an undergraduate he learned of the works of the great German surgeon, Theodor Billroth¹ and the pathologist, Otto Weber.² Both were engaged in the study of fever, particularly in relation to the pyrogenic action of purulent exudates. They had doubtless been influenced by the writings of George Zimmermann,³ an army surgeon who a decade earlier had stressed the frequency with which elevations of body temperature are related . . .