Carl Wilhelm Boeck

Carl Wilhelm Boeck (December 15, 1808 - December 10, 1875) was a Norwegian dermatologist who was born in Kongsberg. In 1831 he earned his medical degree from the University of Christiania, and from 1833 until 1846 he practiced medicine in Kongsberg. In 1846 he became a lecturer of dermatology and surgery at Christiania, and in 1851 was appointed as a full professor. Later in his career he visited America to research leprosy among Norwegian immigrants.

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Boeck was a specialist concerning research and treatment of syphilis. He is remembered for his experiments with "syphilization", which was a form of vaccination against the disease. This methodology consisted of repeated inoculations of secretion from "soft chancre", until inoculation caused no further reaction. Boeck wasn't the first physician to try this practice, as syphilization was earlier attempted by Joseph Alexandre Auzias-Turenne (1812-1870), who experimented with syphilization on laboratory animals.

In the 1840s, with dermatologist Daniel Cornelius Danielssen (1815-1894), Boeck performed research of leprosy, and the two men collaborated on an important treatise called Om Spedalskhed (On Leprosy). At the time, the two physicians believed that leprosy was an hereditary disease.

References

• Who Named It?, Carl Wilhelm Boeck