Carl Weigert (1845-1904)

Carl Weigert was the cousin of Paul Ehrlich, who had once introduced Paul Ehrlich into the secrets of cell staining. He also advised Paul to study under Waldeyer in Strasbourg. Weigert was born and educated in Germany and was influenced early by his mentors in physiology and anatomy. Later he gravitated to Pathology and held the chair in Leipzig, but moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1885, where he did his most important work, due to anti-Semitism. In Frankfurt he worked for the Senckenberg School of Anatomy as a lecturer and at the same time prepared dissections for anatomical demonstrations as appointed prosector of the Frankfurt hospitals. He was the founder and editor of Fortschritte der Medizin, the first medical and scientific journal to be edited in Frankfurt. Among the articles he published in the journal was his then famous paper on the white thrombus, a form of damage to the inner wall of the blood vessels.
He will always be remembered for creating a stain for myelin sheath which opened up a new vista in the investigation of the nervous system. He is also perpetuated by the creation of a glia giber stain which he utilized on both normal and diseased cerebral cortex. He was one of the great neuropathologists of the past.