Richard Liebreich


Richard Liebreich was a German ophthalmologist and physiologist who was a native of Königsberg. He was of Jewish ancestry.
In 1853 he earned his doctorate at Halle, and from 1854 until 1862 was an assistant to Albrecht von Graefe in Berlin. He subsequently practiced medicine in Paris and London, where he was head of ophthalmology at St. Thomas Hospital. He later retired from medicine and moved back to Paris, where he worked as a sculptor and painter. His brother, Oskar Liebreich was a noted pharmacologist.
In 1863 he published the highly acclaimed Atlas des Ophthalmoscopie, an atlas dedicated to the subject of ophthalmoscopy. He also designed a popular model of ophthalmoscope called the "Liebreich ophthalmoscope". He was interested in the pathological changes of the eye as viewed through the ophthalmoscope, and in 1859 provided a classic description of ocular changes in Bright's disease.
As an assistant to Albrecht von Graefe, Liebreich performed important research involving Usher syndrome, and demonstrated the combined heritability of blindness and deafness concerning the disease. As a physician in Paris he performed a successful operation on the mother-in-law of emperor Napoléon III.

Works by Liebreich that have been published in English