Early life and name Born in
Kaposvár,
Hungary,
Austrian Empire, to a
Jewish family, originally his surname was Kohn; but, with his conversion to the
Catholic faith, he changed it to Kaposi in 1871, in reference to his town of birth. One purported reason behind this is that he wanted to marry a daughter of then-dermatology chair,
Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, and advance in society, which he could not have done being of Jewish faith. This motivation seems unlikely, however, because he married Martha Hebra and converted to Catholicism several years prior to changing his name, by which time he was already well established in the Vienna University faculty and a close associate of her father, Ferdinand. A more plausible explanation is based on his own comments to colleagues that he changed his name to avoid confusion with five other similarly named physicians on the Vienna faculty. Rumors about the sincerity of both his marriage and his concerns about his Jewish ancestry may have arisen through professional jealousy;
William Dubreuilh (1857–1935), first professor and chairman of dermatology in Bordeaux, noted, "On disait de Kaposi qu'il avait pris la fille de Hebra, sa maison, sa chaire et sa clientèle, laissant le reste à son beau-frère Hans Hebra." ("It was said of Kaposi that he had taken Hebra's daughter, his home, his chair and his clientele, leaving the rest to his brother-in-law, Hans Hebra.")
Education and career In 1855, Kaposi began to study
medicine at the
University of Vienna and attained a
doctorate in 1861. In his dissertation, titled
Dermatologie und Syphilis (1866) he made an important contribution to the field. Kaposi was appointed as professor at the University of Vienna in 1875, and in 1881 he became a member of the board of the
Vienna General Hospital and director of its clinic of
skin diseases. Together with his mentor, Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra, he authored the book
Lehrbuch der Hautkrankheiten (Textbook of Skin Diseases) in 1878. Kaposi's main work, however, was
Pathologie und Therapie der Hautkrankheiten in Vorlesungen für praktische Ärzte und Studierende (Pathology and Therapy of the Skin Diseases in Lectures for Practical Physicians and Students), published in 1880, which became one of the most significant books in the history of
dermatology, being translated to several languages. He is credited with the description of
xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disorder now known to be caused by defects in
nucleotide excision repair ("Ueber Xeroderma pigmentosum. Medizinische Jahrbücher, Wien, 1882: 619–633"). Among other diseases, Kaposi was the first to study
lichen scrofulosorum and
lupus erythematosus. In all, he published over 150 books and papers. He is widely credited with advancing the use of
pathologic examination in the diagnosis of dermatologic diseases. He died on 6 March 1902 in
Vienna,
Austria-Hungary.
Kaposi's sarcoma His name entered into the
history of medicine in 1872, when he described for the first time
Kaposi's sarcoma, a
cancer of the
skin, which he had discovered in five elderly male patients and which he initially named "idiopathic multiple pigmented sarcoma". More than a century later, the appearance of this disease in young gay men in
New York City,
San Francisco and other coastal cities in the
United States was one of the first indications that a new disease, now called
AIDS, had appeared. Kaposi's sarcoma is a tumor that is caused by a virus,
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus or KSHV, discovered in 1993. Kaposi's sarcoma is now the most commonly reported cancer in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. According to J. D. Oriel, "in his lifetime, Moritz Kaposi was acknowledged as one of the great masters of the
Vienna School of Dermatology, a superb clinician and renowned teacher". While his mentor, Ferdinand von Hebra, is considered the "father of German dermatology", Kaposi was one of the first to establish dermatology on its anatomical
pathology scientific basis. He became the chairman of the
Vienna School of Dermatology, after Hebra's death in 1880. ==Works==