Born in the
Principality of Lippe, on 31 March 1833, Althaus was the fourth and youngest son of Friedrich Althaus and Julie Draescke. His father was general superintendent of Lippe-Detmold, a Protestant dignity equal to the Anglican rural dean; his mother was a daughter of the last Protestant bishop of
Magdeburg. He received his classical education at the
University of Bonn, and began his medical studies at
Göttingen in 1851 continuing in
Heidelberg and graduated M.D. at
Berlin in 1855, with a thesis
de Pneumothorace. He then visited Sicily with Professor
Johannes Peter Müller to study zoology. He worked under Professor
Jean Martin Charcot in Paris. Althaus was the physician at the
Hospital for Epilepsy and Paralysis until 1894, when he was appointed to the honorary office of consulting physician. Althaus married Anna Wilhelmina Pelzer in June 1859, and had two sons and a daughter, of whom the latter survived him. He was greatly interested in the therapeutic effects of electricity. ==Works==