Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/543

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Dreschfeld
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Dreschfeld

can Society of Mechanical Engineers, of which he was elected an honorary member in 1886, he prepared a special memoir of Sir Henry Bessemer [q. v. Suppl. I]. He also wrote the article on Bessemer for this Dictionary. He was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 4 Feb. 1896, and of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1874, and was a member of the council of the Society of Arts (1890-3). In 1901 he founded, as a monthly supplement to 'Engineering,' a journal called 'Traction and Transmission,' which he edited with much care until it ceased in 1904. Dredge died at Pinner on 15 August 1906. He was long a widower; an only child, Marie Louise, survived him. With Mr. Maw, Dredge published in 1872 'Modern Examples of Road and Railway Bridges.' Other of his publications, which were largely based on contributions to 'Engineering,' were: 'History of the Pennsylvania Railroad' (1879); 'Electric Illumination' (2 vols. 1882); 'Modern French Artillery' (1892), for which he received a second decoration from the French government, and 'The Thames Bridges from the Tower to the Source,' part i. (1897).

[Engineering (with portrait), 24 Aug. 1906; Min. Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. clxvi. 382.]

W. F. S.


DRESCHFELD, JULIUS (1846–1907), physician and pathologist, born at Niederwaren, near Bamberg, Bavaria, in 1846, was youngest son in the family of five sons and five daughters of Samuel Dreschfeld, a well-to-do merchant, by his wife Giedel (Elizabeth), a well-educated woman who had been acquainted with Napoleon I. The parents were orthodox Jews who were highly respected in their neighbourhood. The father lived till ninety-two and the mother till ninety-seven. After early education at Bamberg, Julius went with his mother to Manchester in 1861. Entering the Owens College, he took prizes in the English language, mathematics, and science. In 1863 he gained the Dalton chemical prize with an essay on 'The Chemical and Physical Properties of Water,' and in 1864 the Dalton junior mathematical scholarship. His medical education was received at the Manchester Royal School of Medicine (Pine Street). In 1864 he returned to Bavaria and continued his medical study at the university of Würzburg, where he graduated M.D. and acted for a time as assistant to von Bezold, professor of physiology. In 1866 he saw active service as an assistant army surgeon in the Bavarian army during the Austro-Prussian war. Whilst at Würzburg he paid special attention, under Virchow, to pathology, the branch of medical science to which he devoted himself in later years. In 1869 he returned to England, and after becoming licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in London settled down in practice in Manchester. In 1872 he was appointed honorary physician to the Hulme Dispensary, Manchester. Next year he became an honorary assistant physician at the Manchester Royal Infirmary; in 1883, on the resignation of Sir William Roberts, [q. v. Suppl. I], honorary physician, and in due course senior honorary physician in 1899. His association with the active staff of the infirmary lasted until October 1905, when, on reaching the age limit, he became an honorary consulting physician. Even then he was granted the unique privilege of having a few beds in the infirmary allotted to him and was asked to continue his clinical teaching there.

Meanwhile Dreschfeld was pursuing the study of pathology. In 1875 he supervised the pathological section of the medical museum at Owens College and classified and catalogued the specimens. In 1876 he began to lecture in pathology, and the efficiency with which he conducted his department led in 1881 to his appointment as professor of general pathology and morbid anatomy and also of morbid histology, the first chairs in these subjects in England. His pathological laboratory was said to be the first of its kind in England. The number of Dreschfeld's students rose from three in 1873 to 110 in 1891. His lectures were models of i clearness, conciseness, and completeness. Through his influence pathology and morbid anatomy was made a special subject in the medical examinations of the Victoria University and not part of the medicine and surgery papers. This reform was soon followed by other examining bodies throughout the kingdom. In 1891 Dreschfeld withdrew from his pathological chair to become professor of medicine on the resignation of Dr. John Edward Morgan, and he retained that post till death.

Dreschfeld read widely the work of German clinicians and pathologists, and tested it in his own wards or laboratories. He was near forestalling Pasteur in the latter's classical researches on hydrophobia. In 1882-3, when Pasteur had just published his researches on 'intensification' and 'diminution' of the