Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen is remembered eponymously for describing the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis type 1. He was born in 1833 in Gütersloh, Westphalia, where his father was an elementary school teacher, and his mother died shortly after his birth. He attended high school at Ratsgymnasium in Bielefeld, studied medicine at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, and Berlin, graduating MD from the latter in 1855. After spending three semesters in pathological anatomy under Rudolph Virchow, he further enhanced his education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris, and from 1858 to 1864 worked at the institute for pathological anatomy in Berlin. He was briefly Professor in Königsberg (1864) and in Würzburg (1864 to 1872), then became Professor of General Pathology at the new university in Strasbourg, was rector of the university after 1877, and remained there until his death in 1910.^1,2

His research in pathology was broad. He was one of the first to describe hemochromatosis, the condition where excess iron accumulates in the body, leading to organ damage, particularly in the liver, heart, and pancreas. He performed studies on the heart and circulation, acromegaly, tuberous sclerosis, stones in the pancreatic duct in diabetes, cancer, osteomalacia, and rickets. He published basic work on lymph channels in connective tissue (canals of Recklinghausen,1862), apoptosis, ischemic cell death, leucocyte migration, and mast cells.

His most notable work, however, was on neurofibromatosis, a condition in which benign fleshy bumps called neurofibromas are formed in the skin, nerves, bones, and other organs. Other but less common complications are skeletal deformities (scoliosis or curvature of the spine), macrocephaly (an abnormally large head), seizures, learning disabilities, cognitive impairments, optic pathway gliomas, and tumors that can affect the vision or the heart.

Recklinghausen has been described a pleasant man with a colorful personality. He opposed Robert Koch’s idea that the tubercle bacillus was the cause of tuberculosis, arguing that to say that was like blaming sparrows for the piles of horse manure on which they were all too often perched in the streets of Strasbourg.² 

Further reading

1. Tudor Crihalmeanu, Varun Ayyaswami, and Arpan V. Prabhu. JAMA Dermatol. 2018;154(8):921.
2. Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen. WhoNamedIt. https://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1174.html