Oswald Berkhan (19 March 1834 – 15 February 1917) was a German
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
.
Born in
Blankenburg am Harz
Blankenburg (Harz) is a town and health resort in the Harz (district), district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, at the north foot of the Harz Mountains, southwest of Halberstadt.
It has been in large part rebuilt since a fire in 1836, and po ...
, he was one of the initiators of the "Idioten-Anstalt
Neuerkerode" (institution for people with mental illnesses), which was thought to be a sanctuary for disabled and ill people. He was also a dedicated reformer of special education schools.
He was the first person to identify
dyslexia, in 1881, though the term "dyslexia" was coined several years later (in 1887) by
Rudolf Berlin, who was an
ophthalmologist in
Stuttgart.
Berkhan died in
Braunschweig
Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...
.
Publications (selected)
*1863: ''Beiträge zur Geschichte der Psychiatrie ... 1. Heft. Das Irrenwesen der Stadt Braunschweig in den früheren Jahrhunderten''
*1889: ''Ueber Störungen der Sprache und der Schriftsprache''
*1899: ''Über den angeborenen und früh erworbenen Schwachsinn''
*1902: ''Über den angeborenen oder früh sich zeigenden Wasserkopf (Hydrocephalus internus) und seine Beziehungen zur geistigen Entwickelung''
*1910: ''Das Wunderkind Christian Heinrich Heineken''
*1910: ''Otto Pöhler, das frühlesende Braunschweiger Kind''
Legacy
In 2016,
Oswald Foundation, an
accessibility technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...
company named after Berkhan, was established to build products for individuals suffering from
disabilities.
See also
*
History of dyslexia research
References
External links
"Oswald Berkhan" in Economypoint (includes list of articles)
1834 births
1917 deaths
People from Blankenburg (Harz)
People from the Duchy of Brunswick
German psychiatrists
{{Germany-med-bio-stub