Carl Wilhelm Boeck (December 15, 1808 – December 10, 1875) was a Norwegian dermatologist born in Kongsberg.

In 1831 he earned his medical degree from the University of Christiania, and from 1833 to 1846 he practiced medicine in Kongsberg. In 1846 he became a lecturer of dermatology and surgery at Christiania, and in 1851 was appointed full professor. Later in his career he visited America to research leprosy among Norwegian immigrants.

Boeck specialized in research and treatment of syphilis. He is remembered for his experiments with "syphilization", which was a form of vaccination against the disease. The practice consisted of repeated inoculations of secretion from "soft chancre", until inoculation caused no further reaction. Boeck wasn't the first physician to use syphilization, as it was earlier attempted by Joseph Alexandre Auzias-Turenne (1812–1870), who experimented with syphilization on laboratory animals.

In the 1840s, with dermatologist Daniel Cornelius Danielssen (1815–1894), Boeck conducted research of leprosy, and the two men collaborated on an important treatise called Om Spedalskhed (On Leprosy). At the time, the two physicians believed that leprosy was an hereditary disease.

[edit] References

• Carl Wilhelm Boeck @ Who Named It