Emil Ponfick

In 1867 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, and later was an assistant to Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen (1833–1910) at Würzburg, and to Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) in Berlin.

He is credited with establishing the unity of human and bovine forms of the disease.

[3] In 1874, Ponfick warned the Association of Baltic Physicians about the dangers of animal-to-human blood transfusions (xenotransfusion).

This warning was based on empirical experience: a patient had died after receiving blood from a sheep.

The following year physiologist Leonard Landois (1837–1902) from the University of Greifswald backed up Ponfick's findings with statistical data on the dangers of xenotransfusion.