Karl Oskar Medin

Karl Oskar Medin studied in Uppsala and Stockholm. He graduated med. lic. in Stockholm in 1876 and received his medical doctorate at the University of Uppsala in 1880. 1876-1880 he was assistant physician at the Children’s Hospital in Stockholm, 1880-1883 Dozent in paediatrics at the Karolinska Institutet. In 1883 he was appointed extraordinary professor, in 1884 full professor of paediatrics at the Karolinska Institutet, and was appointed head physician at the Children’s Hospital. He was emerited in1914 and died in 1927.

Medin is particularly remembered for his investigations of poliomyelitis, meningitis epidemica, infant scurvy and tuberculosis in children. Already before Robert Koch’s discovery of the tubercle bacillus, he maintained the infectious character of tuberculosis. He first described the epidemic nature of infantile paralysis.

For ten years Medin was chairman of the city office of public health. He devised the plans for the new building of the children’s hospital and also concerned himself with questions of life insurance.

• Meningitis cerebrospinalis epidemica infantum.
  Stockholm, 1880.
• Några ord til allmänheten om den akuta barnförlamningen. Stockholm, 1905.