Editing Theodor Escherich (section)

==Life and achievements==

=== Family and education ===
Theodor Escherich was born in [[Ansbach]], as the younger son of ''Kreismedizinalrat'' (District Medical Officer) Ferdinand Escherich (1810−1888), a medical [[statistician]], and his second wife, Maria Sophie Frederike von Stromer, daughter of a Bavarian army colonel. When Theodor Escherich was five, his mother died, and five years later Ferdinand Escherich moved to [[Würzburg]] to take up his former position as ''Kreismedizinalrat'' and married his third wife. When Theodor was 12, he was sent to a boarding school run by [[Society of Jesus|Jesuits]]  in [[Feldkirch, Vorarlberg|Feldkirch]], [[Austria]] for three years. Later, he finished secondary education in Würzburg, where he attended a [[Gymnasium (school)|''Gymnasium'']] (classical language high school) and took his ''[[Abitur]]''  examination in 1876.

After a half-year military service in [[Strasbourg]],  Escherich took up his studies of medicine at the [[University of Würzburg]] in the winter term of 1876. Later, he attended the universities of [[Kiel]] and [[Berlin]], and returned to Würzburg before passing his  medical examination with excellence in December 1881.

===Medical career in Würzburg and Munich (1882−1890)===
After an 18-month service in a military hospital in [[Munich]], Escherich returned to Würzburg in 1882 to become second and later first assistant to the internist [[Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt]] in the medical clinic of the [[Stiftung Juliusspital Würzburg|Julius Hospital, Würzburg]]. Gerhardt became Escherich's doctoral advisor and suggested the topic of his thesis.<ref>The title of his thesis was ''Die marantische Sinusthrombose bei Cholera infantum'' ("[[Marantic thrombosis]] with infantile [[cholera]]").</ref> On 27 October 1882, Escherich was awarded his [[medical doctorate]]. In the following two years, he attended lectures in Vienna (with Hermann von Widerhofer and Alois Monti) and did [[bacteriology|bacteriological]] research work at the St Anna Children's Clinic. In August 1884, he continued his research work in Munich, where pediatrics had been established as a department of the medical faculty. In October 1884, the Bavarian authorities sent Escherich to [[Naples]] to do research work in the actual [[cholera]] epidemic. He also travelled to [[Paris]], where he heard lectures by [[Jean-Martin Charcot]], the renowned [[neurologist]].

===Discovery of ''Escherichia coli''===
[[File:escherichbook.jpg|left|180px|thumb|Escherich's habilitation treatise]]
In 1886, after intensive laboratory investigations, Escherich published a monograph on the relationship of intestinal bacteria to the physiology of digestion in the infant. This work, presented to the medical faculty in Munich and published in [[Stuttgart]], {{Lang|de|Die Darmbakterien des Säuglings und ihre Beziehungen zur Physiologie der Verdauung}} (1886) (''Enterobacteria of infants and their relation to digestion physiology''), was to become his habilitation treatise and established him as the leading bacteriologist in the field of paediatrics.<br>
It was also the publication where Escherich described a bacterium which he called “bacterium coli commune” and which was later to be called ''Escherichia coli''.<ref>According to  Oberbauer p. 314,   the naming was proposed by [[Aldo Castellani]] and his partner Chalmers in 1919, but the name was not officially recognized until 1958.</ref> For the next four years, Escherich worked as first assistant to [[Heinrich von Ranke]] at the Munich ''Von Haunersche Kinderklinik''.

===Professor of Pediatrics in Graz and Vienna (1890−1911)===
In 1890, Escherich succeeded [[Rudolf von Jaksch]], who had been called to Prague, as professor extraordinary of pediatrics and director of the St Anna children’s clinic in Graz, where he became professor ordinary four years later. While working in Graz, he married Margarethe Pfaundler (1890−1946), daughter of the physicist [[Leopold Pfaundler]]. They had a son Leopold (born 1893), who died at age ten, and a daughter Charlotte (called "Sonny") (born 1895), who survived to the 1980s. <br> Escherich made the Graz pediatric hospital one of the best-known institutions in Europe. <!-- Details of his Graz achievements to be added-->

In 1902, Escherich succeeded Hermann Widerhofer as full professor of pediatrics in Vienna, where he directed the {{Lang|de|St.-Anna-Kinderspital}} (St. Anna Children's Hospital).

Escherich became renowned in 1903 when he founded the {{Lang|de|Säuglingsschutz}} (Infant Defence Society) and started a high-profile campaign for [[breastfeeding]]. He died in Vienna in 1911.