Carl Ludwig Schleich

Born in Stettin on July 19, 1859, Carl Ludwig Schleich became a German surgeon and writer whose name is closely tied to the development of local infiltration anesthesia. He studied medicine in places including Zürich, Greifswald, and Berlin, worked at the Charité, and later opened his own surgical clinic in Berlin.

Schleich is most often remembered for helping make surgery less painful and less risky through his work on clinical anesthesia. Alongside medicine, he was also active as a writer and was described as a philosopher, poet, and painter, giving his career an unusually broad creative range.

He died on March 7, 1922, in Bad Saarow near Berlin. For readers today, he remains an interesting figure not only because of his medical achievements, but because he brought together scientific skill and a deeply literary imagination.