ESMARCH, JOHANNES FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON (1823-1908), German surgeon, was born at Tanning, in Schleswig-Holstein, on Jan. 9, 1823, and died at Kiel on Feb. 23, 1908. He studied at Kiel and Gottingen, and in 1846 became B. R. K. von Langenbeck's assistant at the Kiel surgical hospital and in 1857 head of the general hospital and professor at the university. His attention had been directed to the subject of military surgery in the Schleswig-Holstein wars of 1848 and 1864, in which he had served in the field hospitals, and when the Franco German War broke out in 187o he was appointed surgeon-general to the army, and afterwards consulting surgeon at the great military hospital near Berlin. Esmarch was one of the greatest authorities on hospital management and military surgery. His Handbuch der kriegschirurgisc/ien Technik (1877) is illustrated by admirable diagrams, showing the different methods of band aging and dressing, as well as the surgical operations as they occur on the battlefield. Esmarch himself invented an apparatus, which bears his name, for keeping a limb nearly bloodless during ampu tation. No part of Esmarch's work is more widely known than that which deals with "First Aid," his First Aid on the Battlefield and First Aid to the Injured being popular manuals on the subject.
See H. Rohlfs, Geschichte der deutschen Medizin (Leipzig, 1885, vol. iv.) .