Adolf Mühry (1810-1888): Göttingen's Humboldtian medical geographer.

When in 1857 the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review "endeavoured to give an exposition generally of the principles of Medical Geography", it discussed Adolf Miihry's Die geographischen Verhdltnisse der Krankheiten oder Grundziige der Noso-Geographie (The Geographical Relations of Diseases or, Outlines of NosoGeography) (1856).' When in 1869 the Parisian physician Edouard Carriere (d. 1883), in his programmatic booklet Fondements et organisation de la climatologie medicale (Foundations and Organization of Medical Climatology) proposed the establishment of an international society for medical climatology, he accorded the right of priority for founding such a society to Germany, because of three of its native sons: Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), Heinrich Berghaus (1797-1884) and Adolf Miihry.7 And when in 1892 the third edition of Berghaus's Physikalischer Atlas appeared, it singled out Friedrich Schnurrer (1784-1833) and Miihry as sources for its updated map of the global distribution of human diseases.3 Alexander von Humboldt was and is widely known; Berghaus and Schnurrer are discussed elsewhere in this volume (Chapters 10 and 11); but who was Miihry? For all his nineteenthcentury prominence as a medical geographer, today he is an obscure figure, rarely ever referred to.4 In this chapter I introduce Muhry by providing a brief exposition of his medical geography in the context of his life and times. He is interpreted as the most significant medical geographer in the Humboldtian tradition of the mid-nineteenth century, and