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Carl Siegmund Franz Credé

German gynecologist and obstetrician
Born December 23, 1819, Leipzig
Died March 14, 1892

Carl Siegmund Franz Credé spent his student years in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he was conferred doctor of medicine in 1842. Following a one year scientific journey in Europe he became assistant physician at the obstetrical clinic in Berlin under Busch. In 1850 he became a Privatdozent of obstetrics at the University of Berlin. In 1852 he became the director of the Berlin school for midwives and chief physician of the delivery department, as well as director of a gynecological department established by him at the Berlin Charité.

In 1856 Credé was made professor of obstetrics at the University of Leipzig, where he was, once more, entrusted with the directorship of the school of midwifery and became director of the maternity unit. Here he established a clinic of obstetrics and gynaecology, and established a separate department of women's diseases at the maternity unit. Besides his practical duties he found time for numerous written works. He worked up a textbook on midwifery well known in his days and republished it.

Credé, an excellent teacher as well as a competent organiser, in 1860 received the title of Hofrat (court counsellor), in 1870 that of privy medical counsellor.

From 1853 to 1869 he edited the Monatsschrift für Geburtskunde, from 1870 the Archiv für Gynäkologie.

(Biographical information from whonamedit.com.)

Credé used a warming tub called a "Wärmewanne" at the Leipzig Maternity Hospital in the late 19th century. A drawing of the warming tub (from Credé's paper) is shown below.

"In the 1860s, obstetrician Carl Credé in Germany built his first infant incubator. Pediatrician Julius Hayes Hess, in his 1922 book Premature and Congenitally Diseased Infants, noted that writers from France often attributed the origin of the infant incubator to Denucé. However, Credé created his model independently of Denucé. Credé built and implemented his incubator model in 1861 while serving as the director of the Leipzig Maternity Clinic, later renamed as the Leipzig University Gynecological Clinic in Leipzig, Germany. Credé's incubator was also a double-walled metal tub, but it differed from Denucé's model in that it circulated warm water to heat the surrounding walls. Instead of keeping the incubator on the floor, Credé placed it on a stand with a hose attachment that connected to a hot water faucet, making it easier to replace water as it dissipated the heat. For the next twenty years, Credé used his incubator to treat premature infants at a public institution for children that had been abandoned, called the Moscow Foundling Hospital or Vospitatelnoi Dom in Moscow, Russia. Hospitals across Europe used Credé's incubator until 1881, when obstetrician Stéphane Tarnier developed a different model." --- The Infant Incubator in Europe (1860-1890), embryo.asu.edu/pages/infant-incubator-europe-1860-1890


Dr. Jean-Louis-Paul Denucé
Dr. Stéphane Tarnier
Credé's paper "Ueber Erwärmungsgeräthe für frühgeborene und schwächliche kleine Kinder" (German)
Credé's paper "Concerning Warming Devices for Prematures and Feeble Tiny Children" (English via Google Translate)

Created 4/27/2002 / Last modified 7/2/2022
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