Albert Eulenburg (Fig. 1) was born in Berlin on August 10, 1840, into the Jewish family of the renowned orthopedist Michael Moritz Eulenburg and his second wife, Augusta. When he was seven, his family converted to the Protestant faith. The conversion enabled him to pursue a university career, which was unfortunately closed to Jews in Germany at that time [1].

Albert Eulenburg in 1913. Credit: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz

After completing his secondary education at the Köllnisches Gymnasium and the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in his home city, Eulenburg decided to continue the family tradition, and in 1857, he enrolled at the medical faculty of the University of Berlin. During his studies, he encountered many eminent figures of the 19th-century science, including Johannes Müller, Emil du Bois-Reymond, and Rudolf Virchow. He continued his education at the Universities of Bern and Zurich. At the latter, in May 1861, he earned his medical degree upon a dissertation devoted to muscle excitability, an emerging issue at that time [2]. The same year, he won a prize in a competition at the University of Berlin for his paper on cerebrovascular diseases. The article was published in Virchows Archiv, which was an undisputable success for the young scientist [3].

In the following years, he worked as a surgeon and assistant physician at the University Hospital of Greifswald. In 1864, he habilitated in surgery with a thesis on the history of hip pain treatment. The same year, he won another prestigious award: the Hufeland Society honored him for his work on hypodermic injection. In the book, he presented the principles of treating nervous system diseases with drugs administered by injection, a pioneering endeavor at the time. The book aroused keen interest among physicians and went through several editions [4].

In 1866, Eulenburg moved back to Berlin. There, pursuing his scientific ambitions at the University of Berlin, he habilitated in medicine with a thesis on the activity of nerves responsible for emotion control and took up employment as Privatdocent. Working until 1871 at the Charité Polyclinic, he was under the profound influence of one of the most outstanding founders of 19th-century German neurology, the director of the Nervous Diseases Clinic in Berlin, Wilhelm Griesinger, and his successor, Carl Westphal. During that time, Eulenburg also had to fulfill his duties for the German army as a military physician in the 1864, 1866, 1870, and 1871 campaigns. His commitment to the army did not interfere with his neurological research. In 1871, he published a modern textbook on functional nervous diseases [2].

Three years later, in 1874, the University of Greifswald appointed him professor of pharmacology. The promotion meant leaving Berlin, then one of the world's neurology centers, but the workplace change did not deter Eulenburg from his research on nervous diseases. In the same year, in cooperation with the German pathologist, Paul Guttmann, he published an innovative work on the pathology of the sympathetic nervous system, a pioneering book on that issue, awarded the Astley Cooper Prize in 1877 [6]. At the same time, he was the first neurologist to formulate the hypothesis that migraine attacks result from local impairment of intracranial circulation [5].

Due to institutional obstacles, his attempts to transform the Greifswald Institute of Pharmacology into a modern research center failed. Thus, in 1882, Eulenburg returned to Berlin and applied for a professorship at Friedrich Wilhelm University. His application, however, was refused. Despite that defeat, he found another form of professional activity. In 1885, he opened a private clinic for patients with mental and nervous diseases. His scientific work of that time focused on various forms of neurosis, a diagnosis at the end of the nineteenth century frequently considered to be the basis of many neurological disorders [1].

He continued both his research and teaching, lecturing on neurology and electrotherapy as a private lecturer at the University of Berlin and editing several scientific medical journals, including the Deutsche Medicinische Wochenschrift, one of the most important medical journals in the world at the time. Furthermore, he was the editor of the Encyclopedia of Medicine, a comprehensive work collecting the medical knowledge at the end of the nineteenth century. His scientific activity was finally honored, and in 1900, he was appointed associate professor (extraordinarius) of neurology at the University of Berlin [7].

Eulenburg closely fixed his scientific interests with clinical practice. For example, in 1891, he published a paper on the conus medullaris and cauda equina diseases in women. He also carefully followed the latest technological achievements. In 1896, he presented the case of a patient shot in the head, indicating the exact intracranial position of the revolver bullet by using X-rays. The paper was published only a few months after Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery [8].

Eulenburg's undisputed success was his detailed description of paramyotonia congenita. In 1886, he thoroughly presented a family in which six generations had experienced the characteristic symptoms of myotonia exacerbated by cold [9]. In the era of eponyms, the disease was later named after Eulenburg. It was also Eulenburg who coined the term "progressive hemifacial atrophy" and introduced it into the medical vocabulary in his book in 1871, although the disorder was much earlier reported by Caleb Parry and Wilhelm Romberg [5].

Over time, Eulenburg concentrated his interests on sexology. In 1895, he published a comprehensive work devoted to genital neuropathies and sexual psychoses. In his papers, he boldly addressed the issues of sexual sadism and masochism. In 1913, in a collaboration with Magnus Hirschfeld and Iwan Bloch, he founded the German Medical Society for Sexology and Eugenics and was elected its first president [10].

Eulenburg was married three times. His first wife, Maria Elsa, was the daughter of the Berlin composer Adolph Bernhard Marx. Their only son committed suicide as a young man. Eulenburg's second wife, Paula, was the sister of the eminent Egyptologist Georg Ebers, discoverer of ancient medical papyri. His third wife was a Viennese named Maria Niebauer. Eulenburg died in Berlin on July 3, 1917, and was buried in the Schöneberg district of Berlin [10].