Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal

Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal (born March 23, 1833; died January 27, 1890) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist from Berlin. He was the son of Otto Carl Friedrich Westphal (1800-1879) and Karoline Friederike Heine and the father of Alexander Carl Otto Westphal. He was married to Klara, daughter of the banker Alexander Mendelssohn. After receiving his doctorate, he worked at the Berlin Charité, and subsequently became an assistant at the department for the mentally ill under Wilhelm Griesinger (1817-1868) and Karl Wilhelm Ideler (1795-1860). In 1869, he became a professor (extraordinary) of psychiatry, as well as a clinical instructor in the department for mental and nervous diseases, In 1874 he attained the title of full professor of psychiatry.

Westphal's contributions to medical science are many and varied; in 1871 he coined the term "agoraphobia", when he observed that some of his patients displayed extreme anxiety and feelings of dread when they had to enter certain public areas of the city. He also demonstated a link between tabes dorsalis (nerve degeneration in the spinal cord) and paralysis in the mentally insane.

Westphal is credited with providing an early diagnosis of pseudosclerosis, which is known today as hepatolenticular degeneration. Also, along with neurologist Wilhelm Heinrich Erb (1840-1921), he is credited with describing a deep tendon reflex anomaly in tabes dorsalis which later became known as the Erb-Westphal symptom. His name is also shared with neurologist Ludwig Edinger (1855-1918) regarding the Edinger-Westphal nucleus, which is an accessory nucleus of the third oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve number III).

A large portion of his written work dealt with diseases of the spinal cord and neuropathology. He trained a number of prominent neurologists, including Arnold Pick and Hermann Oppenheim, as well as neuropathologist Karl Wernicke. His son, Alexander Carl Otto Westphal (1863-1941), was also a psychiatrist, and is associated with the Westphal-Piltz syndrome (neurotonic pupillary reaction). Westphal, in addition to his multiple contributions to neurology and neuroanatomy, has been credited with introducing rational and non-censorious treatment to psychiatric hospitalization in Germany.