Felix Plaut (1877–1940) was a German
psychiatrist who was director of the Department of
Serology at the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in
Munich. In 1935 he was removed from this position by the Nazis, and subsequently emigrated to
London.[1]
Plaut is remembered for his research on the
syphilitic origin of
general paresis, as well as his work with
August von Wassermann (1866-1925) in the development of a
serological test for syphilis. Plaut performed extensive research of syphilis and its correlation to psychiatric disorders, and conducted early studies in
neuroimmunology involving the
brain's immune reaction to syphilitic infiltration.
Selected writings
"The Wasserman Sero-Diagnosis of Syphilis in its Application to Psychiatry", translated by
Smith Ely Jelliffe and Louis Casamajor (1911); originally published in German in 1909 as Die Wassermannsche Serodiagnostik der Syphilis in ihrer Anwendung auf die Psychiatrie.
Leitfaden zur Untersuchung der Zerebospinalflüssigkeit.
Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, (1913). 1st Edition
4 Fälle aus der Deutschen Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie; with
Walther Spielmeyer: In
Franz Nissl’s Beiträge, volume 2, 1; Berlin, (1923).
References
^Hippius, Hanns; Hans-Jürgen Möller; Norbert Müller; Gabriele Neundörfer-Kohl (2007). The University Department of Psychiatry in Munich: From Kraepelin and His Predecessors to Molecular Psychiatry. Springer. p. 94.
ISBN978-3-540-74016-2.