Journal
INTENSIVE CARE MEDICINE
Volume 33, Issue 11, Pages 1967-1971Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00134-007-0788-7
Keywords
lactic acid; lactate; shock; leukaemia; Johann Joseph Scherer; historical article
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Lactic acid was first found and described in sour milk by Karl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) in 1780. The German physician-chemist Johann Joseph Scherer (1841-1869) demonstrated the occurrence of lactic acid in human blood under pathological conditions in 1843 and 1851. In this article we honour the forgotten observations by Scherer and describe the influence of Scherer's finding on further research on lactic acid at the end of the 19th century. We conclude that Scherer's 1843 case reports should be cited as the first description of lactic acid in human blood after death and also as the first demonstration of lactic acid as a pathological finding in septic and haemorrhagic shock. Carl Folwarczny was, in 1858, the first to demonstrate lactic acid in blood in a living patient.
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