August Wilhelm Eduard Theodor Henschel 1790-1856
German physician and botanist; born in Breslau Dec. 20, 1790; died there July 24, 1856; educated at the medical and surgical college at Breslau, the Ober-Collegium, Berlin, and the universities of Heidelberg and Breslau (M.D. 1813). He practised medicine in Breslau from 1813 to 1816, and in the latter year was appointed privat-docent in pathology at the university of that city.
Henschel became a believer at the age of 30. His first important work on the sexuality of plants was published soon after. This work attracted considerable attention in the world of science. He was appointed assistant professor at his alma mater in 1821, and in 1832 professor of anatomy, physiology, and pathology.
Henschel is best known through his researches into the history of medicine, the results of which he published in the medical periodical Janus (see below).
Works
Janus, Zeitschrift für Gesch. und Litteratur der Medicin, Breslau, 1846-49
Vertheidigung der Entzündlichen Natur des Croups (in Horn’s “Archiv für Med. Erfahrung,” 1813); Commentatio de Aristotele Botanico et Philosopho, Breslau, 1824;
Ueber Einige Schwierigkeiten in der Pathologie der Hundswuth, Breslau, 1829;
Zur Gesch. der Medicin in Schlesien, ib. 1837;
Das Medicinische Doctorat, Seine Nothwendigkeit und Seine Reform, ib. 1848.
Sources
Hirsch, Biog. Lex.;
De le Roi, Juden-Mission, vol. ii., p. 241.S. F. C.
Jewish Encyclopedia 1906 (public domain) (this article is based on the Jewish Encyclopedia article by Isidore Singer)