 Beginning in 1871 he worked as an assistant to Robert Friedrich Wilms at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin, and from 1873 to 1901 he was chief physician of the surgical department at Lazarus Hospital (Berlin).He died in 1901 from peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix.On 15 July 1882 he performed the first successful cholecystectomy when he surgically removed the gall bladder from a 43-year-old male patient.