He studied medicine in Würzburg, Berlin and Heidelberg, earning his doctorate in 1859.

After obtaining his degree, he served as an assistant to Rudolf Virchow in Berlin, then in 1862 received his habilitation at the University of Breslau.

In 1864 he became an associate professor of pathology at the University of Zurich, and during the following year, attained a full professorship at Bonn.

[1] He was one of the first proposers of a vascular theory for multiple sclerosis after noticing in 1863 that the inflammation-associated lesions were distributed around veins.

[3] This article about a German person in the field of medicine is a stub.