On December 6, 2007, Dr. med. Theodor Wegmann, emeritus senior physician at the St. Gallen Canton Hospital, passed away at the age of 87.
Teddy Wegmann, as his friends called him, was a mycologist of the first hour. He was one of the pioneers of the diagnostics and therapy of invasive life-threatening mycoses. Two preconditions paved the way for his scientific life: In the German-speaking countries Wegmann was a highly distinguished and regarded internist with a broad range of medical experiences, and he closely cooperated with the Basel-based mycologists under Hans Scholer. Both were forerunners of the therapy of invasive mycoses with Amphotericin B and 5-Fluorocytosin – at that time the only active substances. Wegmann was the first clinician who compiled didactically transparent, synoptically analyzed anamneses of mycosis situations; with many years of broad-based advanced education these generated the “mycological awareness” of hospital physicians in the German-speaking countries. Wegmann summarized his experiences in the monograph Medizinische Mykologie – ein praktischer Leitfaden which was published in six editions between 1979 and 1994, one of these also in English.