Vincenz Alexander Bochdalek (1801–83)

Abstract

Vincenz Alexander Bochdalek was a skilful and modest anatomist and pathologist who studied and worked at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague from the 1820s to the early 1870s. He was born on 11 February 1801 in Skřipov (Austrian Silesia). In 1833 he defended his Thesis (A Guide to the Practical Dissection of the Human Brain), from the Faculty of Medicine in Prague. He worked there from 1831 as an Assistant at the Department of Anatomy and from 1837 as the first Pathological Prosector ever in the General Hospital in Prague. In 1840 he was promoted to the Associate Professorship of Pathological Anatomy and in 1845 was appointed Professor of General, Comparative and Surgical Anatomy and Head of the Department of Anatomy. His life's work contributed substantially to the birth and rise of the so-called ‘Prague medical school’. He was elected Dean of the Medical Faculty thrice. He retired in 1871 and died on 3 February 1883 in Litoměřice (Leitmeritz, Bohemia). His name is forever connected with anatomical and pathological structures, especially the lumbocostal triangle in the posterior part of the diaphragm (Bochdalek Foramen) and the hernia at the same site (Bochdalek Hernia).