Heinrich Unverricht was a German internist who was a native of Breslau. In 1877 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Breslau, where he was a student of Michael Anton Biermer

Michael Anton Biermer

Michael Anton Biermer was a German internist who was a native of Bamberg.In 1851 he earned his doctorate from the University of Würzburg, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow. Later he was a professor at Bern , Zurich and Breslau...

 (1827-1892). Later he was a professor at Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

 (1886) and Dorpat (1888), where he resigned in 1892 for political reasons, and became director of the city hospital at Magdeburg

Magdeburg

Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....

-Sudenburg.

Heinrich Unverricht is remembered for his research of epilepsy

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...

, especially his work with progressive myoclonic epilepsy

Progressive myoclonic epilepsy

Progressive myoclonic epilepsy is a rare epilepsy syndrome caused by a variety of genetic disorders. It consists of both myoclonic seizures and tonic-clonic seizures together with progressive neurological decline....

 (PME). In 1891 he described a form of PME that was later called Unverricht's disease

Unverricht-Lundborg disease

Unverricht-Lundborg disease is the most common form of an uncommon group of genetic epilepsy disorders called progressive myoclonic epilepsy. It is caused due to a mutation in the cystatin B gene...

. With pathologist Ernst Leberecht Wagner

Ernst Leberecht Wagner

Ernst Leberecht Wagner was a German pathologist who was a native of Dehlitz, a town in the Burgenlandkreis district of Saxony-Anhalt. He studied medicine in Leipzig under Karl August Wunderlich , in Prague under Josef Skoda and in Vienna under Karl von Rokitansky...

 (1829-1888), the eponymous "Wagner-Unverricht syndrome" is named, which is a muscle disease similar to polymyositis

Polymyositis

Polymyositis is a type of chronic inflammation of the muscles related to dermatomyositis and inclusion body myositis.-Signs and symptoms:...

. Unverricht published over fifty medical works, including Studien über die Lungenentzündung, his prize-winning doctorate thesis on pneumonia

Pneumonia

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...

.